


Crackling in the Dark

by theLiterator



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Accidental Incest, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Assassination, Badass Thea, Child Abuse, Daddy Issues, F/F, F/M, Femslash, Hurt/Comfort, Nanda Parbat, Secret Identity, Threesome - F/F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-06-02 19:31:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6579433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thea is twelve years old when she boards the Queen’s Gambit for the very last time, and while it feels like an ending, her story goes on from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Thea Queen picks the lock on her brother's door for the 58th time and throws herself into his arms, already crying. She is twelve years old, going on thirteen, and every emotion she has ever felt seems to swarm inside her all at once, threatening to tear her apart if she doesn't do _something_.

Sara Lance leaves quietly and without fanfare, like she always does. As if Thea would tattle about her to her sister, anyway. (Not if Ollie might get in trouble.)

Ollie holds her and hushes her and promises her the world on a string if she'll laugh for him, and when she tries and fails, he asks her what is wrong.

Everything is wrong, and nothing, but Oliver wraps his arms around her shoulders and rocks her and tells her it'll all be okay, that she'll survive.

"I can't go to school today," she sobs into his shoulder.

"Okay," he says. "Then come with me and dad. Your break starts in two days, right? What's two days of school compared to _China_?"

"D-daddy won't _let me_!" she insists.

"He can't stop you if he doesn't know until we're already sailing," Ollie says, and she listens because Ollie is the smartest big brother in the world, and one day he'll fill her daddy's shoes, and that means he's worth listening to.

***

The sea tears her from Ollie's grip, and she can hear him yelling even over the crash of thunder and the ocean.

Thea Queen is twelve years old, and she cries because the world feels like it's ending, and her emotions feel like they're going to tear her apart.

The sun burns her and the sea threatens to kill her, for days and days until she knows she's going to die, and be with Ollie and Daddy at the bottom of the sea forever, and she can't cry anymore because instead of emotions, all she feels is numb, and besides, she hasn't had anything to drink so there are no tears left inside of her.

The ship sees her, and she falls asleep in the cruel arms of her crew.

The next cell over from hers holds a man named Anatoly, who looks scary but sounds nice and calls her Lastoshka because her throat is too sore to tell him her name.

He makes the men take her to Dr. Ivo, who gives her tea to make her throat feel better, and then Dr. Ivo makes his men make her stronger.

It hurts, and then she learns to hurt them back, and Dr. Ivo is pleased. His smile is nothing like Daddy's smile, but her daddy is dead at the bottom of the ocean, and she learns early on that Dr. Ivo's smile is much, much nicer than his frown.

***

Thea's fourteenth birthday dawns bright and shining in the North China Sea, and the Amazo gains a passenger.

Thea Queen looks into her big brother's eyes and she _hates_ him, because he did not save her, could not save her, can not save her, and it doesn't hurt at all to hit him and hit him and hit him.

Dr. Ivo brushes her hair that night and tells her she must trick Ollie, and Thea nods.

"I'll take you home," Dr. Ivo lies, and Thea meets his eyes in the mirror. "You and Ollie will see your mother again. I just need his friends."

She nods and wonders if Ollie's friends, who saved him, can save her too.

She wonders if a double cross is as easy as she remembers seeing in movies, as she remembers from her friends whispering lies about each other behind their hands.

She decides it must be, and resolves herself to making Ollie hate her as much as she hates him.

***

It must not work, because when the strangers on the island make Dr. Ivo let him go, Ollie scoops her up like he had when she'd been a little kid and runs with her until they are lost in trees and rocks and fresh, flowing water.

He lets her drink her fill and the woman, Shado, brings her food, freshly cooked meat that tastes better than Raisa's best work, greens and boiled roots that she devours.

Shado says something in a language Thea doesn't understand, and the other man, Slade, shrugs.

"Hey, kiddo," he says, hunkering down to her level. "When was the last time you had a proper meal in you?"

She opens her mouth to reply, and then she shrugs.

Ollie lays down next to her, his body a bulwark against the night breeze. "I never stopped thinking about you, Speedy," he whispers.

"I did," she admits guiltily, staring at the sky. She knows the stars are the same because they're at a similar latitude to Starling City, and she knows the names of most of them now. She knows how to stitch up wounds and test a blood culture.

She knows how to hurt men, and how men hurt girls like her.

"That's okay," he whispers after a few moments. "You remembered when it mattered."

She mouths the words 'I love you' at his back, and once she's sure he's asleep, she sits up and scoots as close to the fire as she can get.

"May I braid your hair?" Shado asks, showing a wooden comb, teeth widely spaced and shiny with some sort of oil.

"Did you make that yourself?" Thea asks, feeling suddenly very shy. Shado is beautiful and strong and smart, and Thea is none of those things, and she's embarrassed to realize it.

Shado smiles at her and nods.

"Yeah," Thea agrees. "But only if you teach me your language."

"It's Mandarin," Shado says, and then she begins.

***

Thea knows a way to save Slade, but she doesn't like him; he's too much like the crew of the Amazo, no matter how nice he seems. Ollie loves him though, she can see it in his eyes, so she whispers what she knows to Shado, who squares her shoulders and nods.

"We will go," she says, and then, more quietly, "You remind me of my sister."

Thea blushes and squirms, and Shado smiles at her and squeezes her arm.

***

Slade and Shado talk to her like Ollie does, like he always did, like she's important and like her opinion matters, and they engage in simple travel games in Chinese, everyone laughing when Ollie starts complaining about being left out.

She thinks if it weren't for the stink of cooked flesh and the the septic shock Slade is fighting back with all his might, it might even be fun.

She hopes the myths are wrong and Slade won't change. She's only fourteen, but she's read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; she's lived it out day by day with Dr. Ivo.

***

Ollie lets Shado die, and Thea can't cry for her, because her emotions are still broken.

Slade picks her up like she's only four, and they run again. It's a little island in a vast ocean, she knows that much from the Amazo-- surely they'll run out of island before Dr. Ivo runs out of men, even if Slade is now unbeatable like the myths all say.

***

Slade doesn't teach her any more Chinese, but he does give her a long, wicked dagger, and he shows her how to fight with it. Ollie purses his lips and practices with his bow.

Thea pictures Dr. Ivo's lying eyes every time she slashes, and Slade smiles his approval at her.

She listens to the noises they make at night, and hears the murmured promises.

"I'm going to get you and your sister home," Slade whispers.

Thea wonders where Slade will go, or if he will stay.

He seems as much a part of the island as the trees and the rocks, and she falls asleep dreaming of the island shooting her up into the sky to be caught in her dead father's skeletal arms, kelp and seaweed and ocean water surrounding them both.

She does not drown, because she drowned already months and months ago, and all that is left is a husk of a girl, a hozen on a string. Whispered words of Chinese, her brother's smile.

A hand-carved comb and a scrap of driftwood she'd never meant to keep.

***

_"Are you sure this will work?"_

She nods her head yes even though the answer is no. Ollie kisses her cheek and she rubs at it while she and Slade wait for the signal.

***

Ivo gives himself the Mirakuru and goes insane, and Thea’s last thought before she’s knocked unconscious by a chunk of disintegrating Amazo is that Slade had better win.

***

Thea wakes up in Hong Kong, and Oliver is there, and when they try to run, she can hear him get caught.

She keeps running.

There are Marines around the perimeter of the U. S. Consulate in Hong Kong, and Thea hangs back, looking at them in their uniforms, at the metal detectors and barbed wire.

Thea thinks about her mom for the first time in months, and all she feels is cold. No emotions surface, and she darts forward.

“Please help me,” she says to the Marine on duty at the gate. “They’ve kidnapped my brother, and I don’t know what to do.”

Belatedly, she realizes-- “I don’t have my passport.”

The Marine looks at her, and his lips curve down, and Thea has learned to hate it when men (Dr. Ivo) frown, so she takes a step back.

Except he crouches down so he’s looking up at her and says, “That’s okay,” and “We’re here to help you.”

Thea nods, but suddenly she can’t trust this, so she takes another step back.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

“Thea,” she whispers, and somehow he hears it, despite the noise of the street.

“How old are you, Thea?” he asks, and she tries to count days, but once she’d left the Amazo, there had been no calendars to keep track, and she feels like it must have been years since Shado died. Plus, she must have been unconscious for a while to have woken up in Hong Kong.

“I don’t know,” she admits. “What’s today’s date?”

His frown gets harder, more defined, and if Thea had money or thought she’d be recognized at the Hong Kong QC building, she’d leave, but she’s afraid-- she thinks maybe the people who’d taken Ollie had known who they were, and their building is probably being watched.

And besides, what if the board hadn’t let Mom be in charge when Dad had died? It might not even be QC anymore. What if it’s Merlyn Industries or something else?

“I’m going to use my radio,” the Marine said, gesturing at the device clipped to his belt, “And we’re going to get you inside. Okay?”

Thea waits a moment, trying to decide, assessing the barbed wire and the other guards, and decides she can probably run away again if she has to. QC can be a contingency plan.

If Ivo hadn’t killed him, Slade would probably be proud of her for coming up with one.

“Okay,” she says, squaring her shoulders.

“Atta girl,” he says, and then he turns away a little to murmur into his radio.

They stare at each other for several long minutes until a woman Marine emerges from the compound.

“Thea?” she asks, and Thea nods. “Come with me; we’ve got a medic standing by to get a look at you, and after that I bet we can scrounge up some grub. Sound alright by you?”

Thea nods and lets the woman take her hand.

Everything is shining and bright and clean, and the food is-- it’s _normal_ : steak and green beans and instant mashed potatoes, and the doctor they had was just some old guy who’d been trying to get his visa extended, but he clucks at her about her bruises and the long scar on her side from where she’d almost died in the wreck, and at the healing cuts from Slade teaching her about knife fighting.

Everyone asks a bunch of questions about her parents and where she’s been, talking over each other, so she just keeps her head tilted down so the unnaturally bright fluorescent lights don’t give her a headache and lets them argue over the top of her, until one by one everyone leaves, still shouting.

The doctor grimaces and stares after them. “My specialty is pulmonology. I’m sorry. I’m used to angry old men who’ve smoked all their lives, not little girls.”

Thea shifts her weight, ready to kick him and run if she needs to. “I’ve met worse doctors, I promise.”

He favors her with a smile and hands her his card. “If you need an adult on your side, you call me, okay? Now I’ve got to go check on my visa paperwork, and I’m sure they’re just about to remember that they were arguing about _someone_ , not a hypothetical situation, and come find you.” He pats her head. “Good luck. I bet your parents will be very relieved to hear from you.”

“Yeah,” Thea says, instead of telling him her Dad is dead and has been for almost two years.

The woman Marine waits for the doctor to leave before coming back into the office they’ve tucked Thea away in.

“There’s paperwork,” she says, smiling at Thea. “There’s _always_ paperwork.”

“Are you looking for my brother?” Thea asks. “They still have him; he told me to run.”

“The consular staff will contact the local authorities as soon as we know what to tell them,” the woman says. “Now, can I get your full name?”

The woman sits, a pen poised over the paper, and Thea blinks before answering “Thea Dearden Queen. It’s not short for anything, and it’s D-E-A-R-D-E-N,” which causes the woman to drop her pen.

“Th-Thea,” the woman says. “Right. Date of birth?”

“January 21, 1995,” Thea recites.

The woman nods and continues asking questions, and Thea doesn’t really remember some of the answers, if she’d ever known them, but she does her best and, at the end, she signs where the woman shows her, and watches as she scrawls her own signature beneath Thea’s.

“Alright, the next page is a missing persons report. I suspect you don’t have a picture of your brother?”

Thea twists her hands together and shakes her head. “His name is Oliver Queen,” she whispers. “We spent… we were trapped on an island called Lian Yu, and then these government people woke me up, and he distracted them so I could run.”

The woman looks at her for a few long moments, and then she tucks the stack of paperwork neatly together. “I’ll be back, okay?”

Thea nods because she has no choice, and then she is alone.

***

By the third day, Thea knows that they aren’t going to go after her brother, which is unsettling, but she thinks maybe her mom will pay for someone to do it instead, until--

“When’s mom coming to get me?” she asks the Marine; Corporal Stanton, she’d learned.

Stanton turns milk white and won’t look at her, and Thea frowns. She would feel helpless, except Slade taught her how to fight off way scarier people than the U.S. Government, so instead she starts to plan.

_”Your best asset in any fight is your head, kid,” Slade said, tapping her temple. “Your brother’s too, but we don’t expect him to win many fights, now do we?”_

_Thea laughed, and Ollie protested loudly, scooping her up and tickling her until she managed to free herself, and then all four of them were laughing._

They’ve given her all sorts of _things_ , clothes and a novel about a vampire and hairbrushes and combs and even a little makeup; she’d _felt_ too young for that, like it was something she wasn’t supposed to have until high school, but she’s old enough for high school now.

She misses her friends, even though it’s hard to remember faces and names anymore.

She misses Ollie.

The problem isn’t escape. The problem is _after_. She’s pretty sure even the consulate people are in with whoever has Ollie, which means for sure she can’t just go to the QC building, no matter how tempting, and she doesn’t know how she’s going to get home without money or a passport, and even if she could--

_”I need to save my brother,”_ she hisses adamantly in Shado’s Mandarin, startling the cleaning lady into dropping her dusting rag. Thea apologises profusely, and the woman smiles the most genuine smile she’s seen in days-- in over a year.

She comes back that afternoon, when no one is around, holding a bag and frowning.

_”There is a way for us to become strong,”_ the woman says, setting out an outfit. The clothes are locally made, and cheap, but Thea understands that this is help, so she takes off the clothing the Consulate gave her and starts redressing. _”Even strong enough to fight nations.”_

_”I’d like that,”_ Thea says, because she is tired of being weak, and because she needs a _plan_.

_”If you wish to save your brother, you must go_ west _, to the mountains, and further.”_

The next thing the woman withdraws from her bag is a map, and Thea remembers enough from geography and her dad’s obsession with charts to recognize China and all of Asia on it. The woman has circled a tiny hunk of a country between Pakistan and China, tucked away where no one cares but armies and mountain climbers. “Nanda Parbat,” the woman says.

Thea thinks about the many thousands of miles between Hong Kong and Pakistan, and she does not ask the woman how she will get there.

Instead of showing fear, she lies with her body and her face and steels her spine and nods her head. “Okay,” she tells the woman. _”Thank you.”_

***

It turns out that the Chinese they speak in Hong Kong is completely different from the Chinese that the woman spoke to her, that Shado and Slade taught her in the few happy moments on the island, and she feels lost and terrified, crammed into the back of a truck that she has been assured will get her out of the city.

_”It is impossible to come back in,”_ the woman tells her sternly. _”You must be certain.”_

Thea hadn’t been certain, not really, but what other choice was there?

QC, of course, but she needed help getting out of the U.S. Consulate first, and once she was out, once the woman had fed her and given her more clothes and a long series of instructions, rumors, and myths about the tiny kingdom of Nanda Parbat, she had…

She wanted to go, just to _know_ , to see truth from lies and fairytales, because surely none of it was true.

An immortal ruler? The fountain of youth? A league of assassins and shadows to fear in the night?

It was utterly impossible, but Thea is fourteen, almost fifteen, and she’s free to do as she pleases for the first time since she was twelve, and what she _pleases_ is to go to an imaginary country and meet a demon in the shape of a man.

***

She has never hitchhiked before in her life, and the first time a farm truck pulls over and opens its door for her, a thousand thousand warnings about how she should never ever do this echo through her head, but then she thinks about all the awful things that have happened, everything that she has survived, and she thinks: the worst that could happen is he could kill me.

So she gets in.

He passes her off to a friend of his, and when the new man asks her something in a language that is nearly incomprehensible to her she points at the setting sun, and he smiles, showing gaps where his teeth are missing and a genuine kindness that she _wants_ to trust.

He teaches her simple words, and laughs when she gets them wrong, and takes her into his home.

His kids all speak Mandarin, accented but intelligible, and she feels herself relaxing by parts as they talk about normal things, school and work and the government and the weather.

***

Some days she walks the whole day, and others she gets rides from strangers; she sleeps under the stars or in family homes, and slowly the landscape and the language shifts around her, or maybe she is shifting, so that the words trip off her tongue more familiarly than her native language, so that the food isn’t strange anymore, but comforting and comfortable, so her hand-me-down clothes, traded, sometimes, for clean ones by some generous grandmother, no longer feel strange around her body.

Tibet is colder, drier, emptier, but still, there are people every few days, so she never runs out of food or water, which is…

It’s _good._


	2. Chapter 2

She crosses the border on foot, and the Chinese officials talk to her but never try to stop her, so she smiles and insists and they reluctantly escort her past the barrier, and she is in Nanda Parbat.

It feels no different from Tibet, which is somewhat disappointing, but Thea is practical enough that she realizes that it makes sense, since the border she had crossed was political, not _magic_.

The road, already a dirt track in Tibet, dwindles rapidly to nothing, leaving Thea stranded at the edge of a field of gravel and boulders and the only thing ahead a fierce, bright mountain.

She thinks about stopping there; she has enough for a rough camp and some food, and she’s quite hungry, and her legs, though stronger than they had been even on the island, are aching and sore.

Before she can make the decision, however, she hears the ring of metal hitting metal and she drops instinctively to a crouch, thinking about Slade and his machetes, and the way they’d push away machine guns.

She figures out the direction of the sound and inches her body around to face it, and she sees a goddess fighting a war against a teeming mass of black-clad men, and Thea growls and draws the knife she keeps hidden under her skirt and rushes to her aid.

Thea doesn’t kill. She’s never had to; Slade has always done the killing, even in clearing out snares and making supper, and she doesn’t start now; she doesn’t even quite notice that the men are falling back at first blood; doesn’t even notice that there are no men left until the woman, flushed with exertion and smiling, says something to her in a liquid sprawl of syllables, and she can't even pick out words from sentences, the language is so new. (Later, she will learn that the language is old, very old. As old as Ra’s al Ghul’s first breath.)

Nothing makes sense, and Thea blinks. “Sorry,” she says, and the woman’s smile softens.

“You fight to the credit of whoever had the teaching of you, girl,” the woman says in accented English, and Thea nods. She is fifteen years old, and has not been a girl since she was twelve and crying into her brother’s shoulder, but the woman’s steel is bright in the late-afternoon sun and Thea has learned the value of keeping quiet from cruel masters.

“Slade,” Thea says, after a second. The woman’s brow furrows beautifully into a frown, and Thea wonders if she will ever be even half as beautiful as her. “Slade Wilson taught me everything I know.”

The woman’s brow smoothes, and she smiles a tiny, delicate smile that is shadowed from the men around them. Thea nods slightly, but doesn’t smile back. She should be feeling fear, or relief, but she is as cold as the seas that killed her.

“What brings you to Nanda Parbat, girl?” the woman asks, and Thea bites her lip.

“I want to save my brother, and… I was told you could teach me how.”

The woman nods. “It is not often that we have outside applicants, but you are adequate, and your goal is honorable.”

Thea nods, but then she blurts out, “You’re supposed to be assassins-- is honor really that important?”

One of the black-clad men speaks up, then. “Honor is the most important,” he says solemnly, and Thea jerks around to look at him, but she is too slow and cannot tell him from the mass of others.

“Welcome, then,” the woman says. “I am Nyssa al Ghul, daughter of Ra’s al Ghul, and Heir to the Demon.”

Thea nods, and then says “Thea.” It comes out short and bitter. “My name is Thea.”

Nyssa al Ghul takes her hand and smiles, this time wide enough for anyone to see, and says, “Thea,” in warm tones before leading her into the mountain.

***

Nyssa doesn’t drop her hand, not even once they are inside what Thea would call a throne room if pressed, and bowing at the waist to a man in embroidered robes. He intones something in the same liquid syllables Nyssa had used before, and Nyssa replies.

He looks at her with the sort of thoroughness she’d grown used to from Dr. Ivo, but she’s also grown used to not shrinking back, so she stares right back at him, and he throws back his head and laughs.

“You are daughter to the Magician,” he tells her, and she frowns.

“I--” she starts with, thinking of her father, dead and buried on that island that is months and miles behind her. Of her mother, who was hard and cold like steel, in her designer clothes. Who would smile at her and Ollie as if they were the stars in her sky before leaving them to the care of each other as she saw to her charities. “Am I?” she asks. She doesn’t know who the Magician is, if being their daughter is a good thing or bad, but she won’t find out if she argues, she thinks.

The man nods slowly. “I can see it in your eyes, and your demeanor. You are his to your bones, girl.”

“Thea,” she corrects, because Nyssa has not told him her name, and the man laughs again.

“Yes,” he says. “You inherited his boldness, too.”

Thea doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing at all.

“So, my daughter tells me you seek your birthright, Magician’s daughter?” he says, and Thea frowns. Her father hadn’t been an assassin, she thinks. If he had, he’d been a poor one, to be killed by lightning in the North China Sea.

“I want to learn,” she says. “I’m going to save my brother.”

“The knowledge is yours by right,” he says. “Be welcome.”

Nyssa nudges her forward and he holds out a hand. Thea knows what to do from stories and movies, and she drops to her knees and kisses his ring.

“Welcome, girl,” he says, shifting so his hand curls over the top of her head. She doesn’t flinch like she’d have done if she were still twelve and not fifteen, and he doesn’t claw her scalp or grab her hair, which is, she thinks, an improvement.

There is a hushed whisper from the rest of the room, harsh and sibilant. “Ra’s.”

***

Nyssa trains her.

Thea is aware that this is unusual-- Nyssa teaches her the League’s Arabic, and Thea’s always been good with language-- soon enough she can understand the murmured surprise from the black-clad masses.

Nyssa is nothing like Shado, and, in some ways, she is everything like Shado.

She has a gem-encrusted ivory comb that she works through Thea’s hair when they bathe after practice. She is silent except for criticism, except for _teaching_ when they are in the practice room, the thud of wood against wood echoing hollowly in the stone chamber.

Everything in Nanda Parbat is ornate in a way that seems like a fantasy story come to life-- the bathing room is enormous, every wall tiled in blue lapis mosaic, a bubbling, heated tub recessed into the floor.

Soaps and oils and perfumes are always laid at the ready, and Nyssa teaches her the name and purpose of each one.

Her words are cool, indifferent, but her eyes are always warm when they linger on Thea; she wonders whether she is supposed to react.

When Thea tries, though, when she reaches into the parts of herself that _should_ react, all she finds is pain and seawater.

The first time Thea bests Nyssa in battle, the date on the 24/7 newsfeed that Ra’s keeps on in his council chambers shows that it is her sixteenth birthday.

Nyssa smiles at her with quiet pride, and kisses her while they are bathing.

Thea has been a little in love with Nyssa since she first saw her, a goddess among milling insects, at the end of a dusty road from Hong Kong.

Thea kisses back.

Women, Nyssa teaches her, are not like the men of the Amazo-- there is touch and return touch, gentle pressure that turns electric. Kisses that taste like copper and cinnamon, and the feel of soft lips on the sensitive parts of her: the crook of her elbow, the curve of her neck. The join where her hip meets her pelvis, the back of her knee.

Thea takes long, long minutes to realize that Nyssa is teasing her, and she hauls her back up with newly-learned skill and hard-won strength to kiss her lips and bite them.

Nyssa rewards her with a hand between her legs, with fingers pressing inexorably into her, with the rising pressure of pleasure.

Thea tries, clumsily, to mimic her, and Nyssa gasps and smiles one of her rare, genuine smiles, and shifts so her thumb is brushing _hard_ at Thea’s clit, and she sighs and shudders and forgets what her plan had been.

After, Nyssa pulls Thea back to her rooms, and lays with her in her bed, and shows her, slow and steady and patient the same way she’d shown her swordplay and staff fighting, how to reciprocate.

Thea likes the way she can wipe every mask from over Nyssa’s eyes and leave her panting and glowing and _hers_.

***

It is a few months before Thea realizes that she is not being called beloved, but Beloved, capitalized intentionally, a title that brings her a great deal of honor and privilege. Ra’s seats Thea at his left hand, and invites her to listen to his council meet.

After, he asks her questions and teaches her about greed, about power. About running the world.

When she realizes that she is allowed to ask questions of her own, she thinks about her dad, long-dead, and her company, and she wonders if maybe it was as much a kingdom as Nanda Parbat, and she as much its princess.

If so, she had done a poor job learning, but she had been a child then, and now she is a woman, for all she is still mainly called girl, and sometimes Daughter. Rarely, she is Nyssa’s Beloved, Nyssa’s little songbird.

Nyssa teaches her the use of the bow. 

Thea thinks of Shado again, only now all she remembers is her death, because she had liked Shado, in the hazy golden days when no one had been hurting her

But she had never loved Shado, and she loves Nyssa, she thinks, with her grace and her power and the small uncertainties that she entrusts to Thea.

Thea keeps her confidences, even though many offer her power and freedom in exchange for the secrets she holds. She thinks Nyssa may even love her back.

She is seventeen when she kills for the first time. She doesn’t even realize what is happening until their attacker is dead, a black-clad figure in the dark of midnight, trying to sneak up on them in Nyssa’s bed.

Nyssa doesn’t say anything when she sees the black-on-black slick of blood on the floor from Thea’s blade, just nudges the dead man’s hand out of her path and rings a bell for the servant.

When they are alone again, Nyssa kisses her silently and tangles her fingers in Thea’s hair, pressing gratitude and apology in equal measure into Thea’s skin. Thea has known her long enough to accept that this is all she will ever get, because Nyssa is the Heir to the Demon, and her life is one of death and silence.

The next day, she sees her mother on the television in Ra’s council chamber, and watches as Moira talks about the welfare of Starling City, and Thea has grown so used to analyzing expression and interpreting motive-- if the shoulder does this, you must duck-- that it is like watching a stranger she has never known lie with all her heart on international TV.

It’s the first time she thinks of Oliver in a long, long while. He must be dead, she decides, watching as her mother pretends not to be terrified. If he weren’t, he would belong wholly to whoever had taken them, back in Hong Kong, for she belongs completely to the League, now.

She doesn’t even care that a man is dead at her hand; is more relieved that she’d hardly known him.

After Ra’s dismisses his council, he turns to her. “Well, Magician’s Daughter?” he asks archly.

“Your nation is divided,” she says. She thinks of the long story of Ra’s, of a man exiled by his Bedouin clan, of immortality and power. “If you fall, she won’t be long to follow you.”

He nods slowly. “Your father said the same thing about her sister,” he tells her solemnly. Thea wonders at that, wonders about the mysteries of Talia’s death, killed before Thea was even born.

She shakes her head. “I don’t know who your Magician is,” she protests for the hundredth time, the thousandth. “I’m not his daughter.”

He laughs as he always does, only this time, when he sobers, it is to look at her long and hard.

“Did Nyssa not tell you of him?” he asks. “She knew him best; he liked children, and she was still a child when Al-Owal was teaching him.”

It takes Thea moments longer than it should to parse that, and she grimaces and shakes her head. “No,” she says. Not adding that she would not care to listen if Nyssa tried.

She kills another time, and another, sometimes in defense of her Beloved, sometimes on Ra’s’s orders. They spend a leisurely weekend in Moscow after slaughtering an entire arm of the Bratva that Ra’s feared would become too-powerful and change the eddies of power in the world.

There is nothing on the news worth watching, but Thea watches anyway. Nyssa does not, but Thea is beginning to realize that Nyssa is not particularly skilled at her father’s chosen game.

It makes the rift in the League all the more concerning, because Thea knows that they two alone cannot fight half the League while trying to control the other.

***

The summer is fading back to crisp cold winter in the foothills of the Himalayas when Thea learns her father’s name.

She is playing chess with Ra’s while waiting Nyssa’s return from a mission in Hong Kong, a place Thea refuses to go, when Oliver Queen walks back into the world, into the spotlight, cameras flashing and the crawl declaring his impossible survival.

She drops her king instead of making her move, and he overbalances, lands on his side, and rolls around slightly.

“Ollie,” she hears herself breathe, and Ra’s’s eyes are cold when she glances back at him in a wash of fear.

“Yes,” Ra’s says, and it’s not a confirmation of her brother’s identity; she hardly needs that. “I have been holding back a mission; waiting for you.”

She doesn’t ask what about her he was waiting for, not if he’s choosing this moment.

“The Magician killed my daughter and defected from my order. He seeks to use what we taught as a way to bring _himself_ power,” Ra’s says, low and steady. Thea thinks about the eddies of power and money and corruption in the world, thinks of what it has cost her to remain at his left hand, to keep Nyssa at his right.

Thea’s eyes flicker frantically between Ollie in the press conference with her mother at his side, and Ra’s’s emotionless face and calm delivery. She thinks she is too much like him, death and seawater and cold, and not enough like _them_ , tears and clinging and smiles.

“The Magician must die,” Ra’s says, and he takes her hand in his. She can feel the hard metal of his ring and the callouses of his swordhand, and she thinks that he holds her hand in just the same way that Nyssa does.

It is the first time that she realizes he cares for her, which should not come as a surprise, but she has known little care these last five years, and it steals her attention from her brother entirely.

“My lord Ra’s,” she whispers, bowing her head and letting her fingers soak up warmth from his. “I don’t-- I still don’t know who he is,” she adds, carefully. She would not admit this as plainly as she did now, except that if she is going to return to Starling City and kill this man, she _must_.

“You might have heard him called Malcolm Merlyn, little bird,” Ra’s tells her. And… she should protest, but--

A thousand things flash through; Malcolm’s smile as he produced a coin from behind her ear, her mother’s tense glances between them. The way Tommy had carried her around before she’d been big enough to chase after Ollie and him, and mom had always yelled at him, had kept Malcolm away from the three of them when she could--

“That’s…” She shakes her head, the knowledge rearranging her world; she glances back at the television, at her mother and her brother, and thinks of her father.

Her father had drowned in a boat accident five years ago.

Her father had loved her.

Her father had--

“That’s a definite possibility,” Thea says slowly, frowning.

The island had never been meant to kill her.

“He is the one who wishes Nyssa dead,” Ra’s continues. “Even as a defector, his words gain traction where they should not. I’m certain you are as desirous that these attempts on her life be stopped as I myself am.”

“But why?” she asks. What could Malcolm Merlyn gain by Nyssa’s death?

An empire, she realizes.

“My daughter,” Ra’s replies, “is the delight of my world, and the best of my offspring. But she is flawed.”

“She’s bad at big picture stuff, sure,” Thea says. “But you’re _immortal_.”

“Am I?” Ra’s asks. “I know _all_ ,” he says. “I know your father just by looking at you, because his blood is owed me, and I know that all things, even should we wish they last forever, must end. And I know that I am selfish, girl, to want my daughter safe.”

“Ollie would be better for that,” Thea says, frowning. “He’s _kind_.” He probably did not kill people for the money and power, at least. “But he’s not stupid.” Except Slade had teased him for being so, and he’d never caught on to Shado’s Mandarin. Except she had gotten away in Hong Kong and he had not.

And she _loved_ Nyssa, didn’t she? She’d loved her since she’d first seen her, powerful and undefeated. She wouldn’t trade _that_ for anything. Except that Ollie had loved Thea first; had even loved the empty, dead shell of a girl the sea had made her, first.

Ra’s shrugs elegantly and stands. “I will make available documents for travel and funds for your use. You will have half the bounty _now_ , and half when he is dead.”

He bends to kiss her forehead. “My daughter chose well, Thea Queen,” he says in a low voice meant for her ears alone.

She waits for the sound of his footsteps to fade completely before she stands, rights her king, and goes back to the suite of rooms she shares with her Beloved.


	3. Chapter 3

Thea Queen breaks into her childhood home to the sound of Oliver screaming.

Her mother is hovering outside Ollie’s room with her hand at her throat, distress written in every line of her body, and she goes _pale_ at Thea’s appearance, but she doesn’t bar the door.

An unfamiliar man crouches over her brother, his hand hovering indecisively above Ollie’s shoulder as he enjoins him to “Wake up, Oliver,” in an accent that is refined enough that it screams ‘money’ even through the fear.

She brushes him aside and hits her knees, jabbing Oliver _hard_ in the ribs and pinning him when he wakes up already attacking.

He blinks up at her, eyes slowly clearing, focusing on her face. “Speedy,” he says, warm affection rippling through his voice, and she starts shaking, so he sits up and pulls her into his arms, and when he presses his hand between her shoulder blades, something inside her opens up, and salt tears flood her cheeks, so she can taste nothing but the sea again.

It is awful, but this time Ollie is there.

After a few minutes, their mother joins them and she can smell her perfume, which seems like a small detail, barely worth noticing, except that somehow Thea remembers it, just as she remembers picking the lock on the door to this room 58 times, just as she remembers the way it has always felt to be wrapped up safe in Oliver’s arms.

“Thea,” her mom says after too many minutes spent crying and rocking. “Thea, _how are you here?_ ”

Thea isn’t ready for the question, hasn’t had a chance to figure out what Ollie told anyone, what stories will work and what won’t, so she shakes her head. “I-- I--”

It’s the man who saves her from her own shortsightedness, and when he comes near again she vaguely recalls him, like a picture in a storybook, standing next to her dad (Robert Queen, who raised her, who held her hand when they set her wrist in the emergency room just months before that fateful trip.) and smiling at her.

She still doesn’t remember his name.

“Give her some time,” he says softly, hand draped on her mom’s shoulder. “She’s here, and that’s the most important thing.”

Thea nods, and Oliver drags her against his chest and breathes her in, pressing his face to her hair. She thinks he wasn’t crying before, when she was, when her mother was, but he is now. She lets him hide it, because he is her brother, and he is _alive_.

And so, she thinks, is she.

***

She’s not sure if it’s the jetlag, or if it’s the novelty of an empty bed in a room that is above ground and unperfumed by incense, but she can’t sleep. Her whole body is as restless as her thoughts.

Eventually she gives up and spends fifteen minutes rearranging her bedroom so there is an empty swathe in front of her bed, and she starts a workout-- just katas smoothly flowing into each other. She has no staves to practice with weapons, and besides, the space is unfamiliar and she doesn’t think breaking something would be wise.

Oliver opens the door around sunrise, shuts it behind him, and she watches him in the corner of her eye as she stretches and moves, sweat starting to make her clothes (unfamiliar, an old tshirt and boxers from Oliver’s room since nothing her mother has left in her own untouched room still fits her and she hadn’t wanted to arouse too many questions by wearing what she had packed.) stick to her skin.

Eventually she stops, bows to her invisible opponent, and turns to face Oliver.

She doesn’t know what to say to him, doesn’t know how to speak to him. Somehow, she’d expected him to be the same boy she’d never meant to abandon in Hong Kong, but he’s got the same body language Nyssa had, the same body language she knows _she_ has, that of a leashed killer.

“Morning,” she says brightly, and he laughs, low and soft.

“Not yet, maybe,” he replies. “Raisa isn’t even up this early.”

Thea frowns. “No tea?” she asks, though it won’t be the tea she’s familiar with, heavy with the scent of cardamom, poured from a samovar and thick with milk. There won’t be kulcha, or Nyssa’s secret smile, or the warmth of their shared bed.

“Let’s go see what we can figure out,” Oliver says, offering her his arm, and she takes it, lets him guide her to the kitchen. She should know the way, but it feels strange and twisting and unfamiliar.

Ollie finds the electric kettle, and Thea finds black loose leaf tea, and cardamom by its scent since she’s never learned the word for it in English, and she puts some into the infuser with the leaves. Oliver frowns.

Thea shrugs at him and they wait for the water to boil in silence.

“I thought they killed you, in Hong Kong,” he says in a low voice.

Thea doesn’t look at him. “A woman smuggled me out of the city, and I-- I followed a fairy tale.”

Oliver snorts a low laugh and the kettle chimes that it’s hot. She lets him pour the water into the teapot and set the timer for steeping, and she pours milk into her cup and wonders if it will taste at all right.

“Did you become a princess?” he asks, and it is so close to correct that Thea laughs aloud, and he turns a grin on her that almost hurts in its intensity.

“Sort of, yeah,” she says, still feeling the edges of laughter under her skin. “I, ah--” she shook her head. Being Nyssa’s Beloved did not make her consort, but it was expected that she be Nyssa’s best supporter, her most loyal advisor, her bodyguard, her lover, her _everything_. “Sort of.”

Oliver’s grin fades faster than she thinks it would have, even two years ago in Hong Kong. “You’re serious,” he says quietly.

Instead of replying, she shakes her head, asks, “Have you heard of the League of Shadows?”

Oliver snorts. “They aren’t real,” he says, which speaks to what must have happened to him after Hong Kong. She wasn’t imagining the killer under his skin, then. “They’re who you blame when no one takes credit for a major act, like-- did you-- there was an attack on the Bratva, last year.”

Thea remembers that with sudden visceral vividity. The smell of blood and death, the way her scimitars had been slicked seeming-black in the poorly lit Moscow night, Nyssa’s kiss, the way the sweat-soaked sheets had felt against her skin at the tiny inn just outside the city where they’d spent the weekend after.

“Yes,” Thea says, hearing her voice as if from a distance. Oliver’s watching her with studied care, and she wants him to hug her again, like he had last night. “That League.”

“Assassins,” Oliver says skeptically. “An entire army of assassins, led by someone who is supposed to be immortal.”

The timer for the tea beeps, startling her into a defensive pose.

Oliver’s hand closes around her wrist almost as soon as she moves, and she looks into his eyes and bites her lip.

“Where were you, Thea?” he asks gently.

“I hitchhiked through China,” she replies, voice quiet. “You learn a lot, on the road. What happened after Hong Kong?”

“Made some friends,” Oliver says. “Made some enemies.”

Thea nods.

She really shouldn’t expect the truth if she isn’t willing to tell it.

The tea is good, but it isn’t _right_.

***

Thea dresses in her own clothing to face the rest of the day, and when her mom finds her in the solar, simply staring at the grounds, Thea startles like a bird at the sudden noise.

“Thea,” her mother blurts. “You were dead. You were _dead_.”

“Mom,” Thea replies quietly, and her mom’s voice drops to a whisper to match.

“Thea, why did-- Oliver said you were dead!”

“There was--” Thea swallowed hard. “There was a ship, and I… they picked me up, mom.”

“A ship?” Her mom’s voice is shrill again, too-loud after the whispers of Nanda Parbat.

“It wasn’t a nice ship,” Thea says.

It’s all _true_ , even if it isn’t an answer.

“But you’re here now,” her mom states firmly, even though it is a question.

“I saw the news, and I knew I had to come back,” Thea whispers, refusing to look at her mom.

“Thea,” comes out a low murmur, along with all the emotion her mom had lied about not feeling in all the press conferences Thea has seen during the last two years.

Thea can’t handle that much raw emotion, not from the near-stranger her mother has become, and she flinches from the hug, flees the room.

***

“I need a hairbrush,” Thea says, leaning against the lintel of her brother’s door. “Mom--”

She shakes her head. “I forgot to pack one, and mom didn’t change anything in my room so I can't find mine, but you used to--”

“Sure thing, Thea,” Oliver replies, kicking something under his bed. “Come in.”

He disappears into the ensuite and Thea curls up on the sofa he hasn’t moved. She doesn’t look at the rug where she knows he sleeps.

When he emerges, he doesn’t hand her the hairbrush, just gestures for her to turn, fumbling with the unfamiliar pins in her hair. 

“These are nice,” he says, a question.

“They were a gift,” she replies. “From a friend.”

The first strokes of the brush through her hair are familiar, like being back on the island with Shado, the smell of wet and rot and forest all around them, Slade grim and grinning at Oliver, Shado’s hands as deft in Thea’s hair as they were in every other activity.

“I miss Shado,” she blurts out, because she has never even _thought_ it, and Oliver freezes.

“Sorry,” he whispers. “If it’s too much, you can borrow the brush, but-- I was afraid _they_ had killed you. Worse.”

He doesn’t explain who _they_ are, and Thea can't even guess-- she’d never really pushed Ra’s to tell her who had Ollie, who had the sort of power to keep a lost little girl in a Hong Kong consulate when she was begging for her mother.

“No,” Thea says. “It’s just--” she sucks in a shuddering breath and presses the heels of her hands to her eyes. Last night had been a fluke, maybe, and she is still dead dead dead, drowned and forgotten. “You’re the only one who knew her.”

Oliver’s fingers comb through her hair a little, twisting the strands so she wants to shiver. “I miss her too,” he says after a few moments. ‘Listen, I told mom that I was alone on the island. I told everyone--”

“I told her I got picked up by a ship.”

His fingers clench and jerk, and she doesn’t finch. The pain is minor, in the scheme of her hurts. “Yeah? So I can say I… didn’t want to give her false hope. Since you hadn’t made it home.”

“Okay,” Thea says. “Okay.”

It’s not a cover story, but if no one has asked Oliver for more, no one will ask her, and they sit in silence as he finishes brushing her hair, until he sets the brush down and laughs a little, sounding like he’s actually amused.

She half-twists to look at him, and he shakes his head.

“I don’t know how to put it up,” he says, and he nudges the little pile of begemmed hair accessories back to her, and she smiles at him, and it feels warm like summer, and his smile is just as genuine.

She doesn’t need a mirror to twist the mass of it up and pin it in place, she's done it enough times. Nyssa was of little help with this, as she wore her own hair loose.

Oliver eyes her critically, pacing around her like a panther.

“They must have been a very good friend,” he says. “I think those are real opals.”

Thea shrugs, feels the ripples of her khameez all the way down to her knees. “She was,” she tells him honestly. “The very best.”

***

Her mother takes her shopping, and talks the entire time. Thea remembers loving the little boutiques, remembers begging to try on clothes that didn’t fit her yet. She is small, still, having spent several critical years undernourished, but they find her things anyway.

She is sick of the crowd around her, and she feels hemmed in by the attention, the lights and the many, many people calling her by her birth name.

“Moira!” a warm baritone voice calls, somehow cutting through the din, and Thea freezes at the approach of Malcolm Merlyn. Her mother does too, and Thea moves the half-step turn to interpose her body between her mother and her target.

She has no weapons on her; she puts up her hands and loosens her stance.

She watches him glance at her, dismiss her. She’s unimportant to him: he wants her mother’s attention.

“Thea, Thea darling, are you okay?” her mom is saying in a frantic murmur.

Thea breathes out.

Her mother’s hand is on her shoulder, and then the boutique owner is there too--too close and stinking of artificial fragrance.

“I--” she whispers, “I didn’t recognize him,” she lies outright. “I thought--”

She shakes her head to pull conscious thought back from underneath the film of the nothingness of instinct.

Her mother is shooting concerned glances between her and Malcolm, and the boutique owner is trying to escort her aside.

“Let me get you some water,” she says in quiet tones. “Come, sit.”

Thea shakes her head.

“Mr. Merlyn,” she says. “I-- haven’t seen you since I was a kid.”

“Thea,” he replies, and his eyes are cold even though he is smiling. “What a pleasant surprise! I thought Oliver had come back alone?”

“Ah, well, she came by a different route,” her mom says.

Malcolm’s whole attention is on her, now.

“That’s very interesting. Do you mind if I steal your mom for a moment?” he nods at the stack of clothes on the shop owner’s arm. “Those clothes probably need to be tried on, right? I do remember what it was like, even though it was so long ago, with my wife,” he adds.

Thea forces herself to pretend this is a cover and flashes a smile. “Yeah,” she says. “Plus, I’m a weird size.”

Deliberately, she turns her back on him and follows the shop owner into the fitting area.

“Gotta fill up my wardrobe, right?” she says when the owner tries to fuss about taking a breather again. “That’s the reason I left the house. Can’t wear the clothes I bought in the airport forever.”

***

The news drones on about their hooded vigilante while Thea dresses for dinner. She unlocks the case with her jewelry and sees a text message on the cellphone she uses for communiques.

It leads her to an internet drop, and to information she doesn’t like: the Triad is gunning for Starling City’s vigilante, and the last thing she needs is Triad muscle anywhere near her turf.

Casting her gaze over the array within, she makes her selections. in the false bottom of her trunk, she has arms, armor, and a variety of poisons, but first she needs to go to dinner.

There’s a strange man looming in the hall when she turns the corner to Oliver’s room, and she ducks back behind the corner and loosens a hairpin, twirling it between her fingers and trying to decide if the man will have moved or not before she whirls back around to fling it.

Oliver’s door opens, and the man says in a clear tone meant to carry. “I think I scared your sister. Man, she moves quick.”

“Nonsense, Mr. Diggle. I’m sure it was just a trick of the light,” Oliver’s voice has a forced quality to it, and it’s moving closer.

“Thea?” he calls and she forces herself to leave cover, to smile.

Her hairpin is still in her fingers, and she reverses her grip as soon as she thinks it.

Both men’s eyes follow the motion and she blinks, keeps the smile. “I dropped it back there,” she says. “I had to go find it. Sorry.”

“I thought maybe it was the fact that there was a stranger in your house,” Mr. Diggle said, offering her a hand. Thea switches the hairpin to her left so she could shake it; his grip is firm but not painful.

“Thea,” she says, and he chuckles.

“John Diggle,” he replies. “Your mom has me trying to guard your brother while that vigilante is targeting rich guys.”

Thea nods, appraising him.

He probably won’t be entirely useless if something comes up, she decides.

“Dinner?” Oliver suggests brightly, offering her his arm. She takes a second to fix the pin back in her hair before she takes it.

***

Thea’s armor feels like the hands of a lover, secure and warm against the chill of the Starling City night, and the smell of fetid ocean water is a different kind of familiar. She can imagine Nyssa stalking with her, bow in hand.

Thea has her own bow, for this; it will be invisible in the shadow of the hooded vigilante if she does need to kill tonight, and she’s skilled enough with it for it to be a sound choice.

She finds a Triad member and drags him into the shadows, interrogating him in rapid-fire Mandarin while he whimpers.

He has no information; she kills him and drops his body into the sea.

When she turns back around, the vigilante is _there_ and she draws. His hands go up immediately, and a distorted voice calls, “I just want to know what you want with the Triad.”

She _can’t_ reply, she realizes. She might have, if he hadn’t disguised _his_ voice, but Thea Queen is famous, she realizes, and people are starting to find out that she’s not dead.

She lowers her weapon.

The vigilante drops into Mandarin, asks the same thing.

She shakes her head.

“Who sent you?” he asks. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he adds.

She pulls her grapnel from her belt and fires, bracing herself in the seconds before it automatically retracts. She rolls as soon as she hits the roof, the motion unhooking the small anchor which she resets one handed while she runs.

He’s behind her, but she’s smaller than him, she can fit through gaps he can’t, and as she careens across warehouses and stacked cargo containers, she keeps an eye out for one. He fires an arrow; misses.

The second one pierces her thigh just as she finds a place to drop down and she groans at the way the arrow drags between the buildings. She has to wrap it; he’s shouting above her while she takes the precious seconds to do so, snapping off the arrowhead and yanking out the shaft with practiced ease, wrapping absorbent black bandaging in place and pressing it hard so it sticks properly.

She keeps running until she hits the Glades, and then she makes her way to a bus station.

No one ever looks for assassins on mass transit.

Thea drags the mask back down off her chin and makes sure she has the exact change in her hand to ride before she allows herself to lean against the wall.

“That went well,” she murmurs to herself in League Arabic, the way she would to Nyssa. Rain begins to fall, icy and wet and rolling off the leather and kevlar of her armor.

She pretends Nyssa is there to say, “We make our own luck: next time we will succeed.”

***

It’s only a few minutes after she has finally crawled into bed that Oliver knocks on her door, opening it a crack to peer at her.

“You’re still awake,” he says, sounding relieved.

“Yeah,” she replies. “It’s sill too strange. Why are you awake?”

“It’s raining.”

She looks at her window, thinks: it had been raining the night she’d broken in to the sound Oliver’s screaming. 

She lifts up the covers, pats the bed next to herself, and he relaxes all at once.

“C’mon,” she whispers, and he comes over to the bed, climbs in.

He doesn’t touch her, but she remembers cold nights on the island, and Oliver’s body a bulwark against the wind and nightmares of the Amazo. She rolls to her side and shifts so his chest is warm against her back, and his arm is hesitant when it wraps around her.

Her last thought before she sleeps is that she’d better not bleed through her bandages because she has no idea how she’ll explain it if she does.

***

She doesn’t have to.

Oliver wakes her up, murmuring “Speedy,” and shaking her shoulder. He’s embarrassed, she can tell, and she blinks up at him, confused.

“Speedy, I think--”

He tosses back the covers and she can see red on her pajama pants, red on the sheets beneath them.

“What--” she asks, momentarily confused, until she tries to roll over and she remembers the arrow. “Shoot,” she hisses, and then she starts cursing in Maori because it’s the only language she’s learned to curse creatively in, and he squeezes her shoulder. 

“You go to the bathroom,” he says firmly, more used to command than _her_ Ollie ought to be. “I’ll go wake up Mom. Unless you’d rather I get Raisa?” He looks so hesitant, when he should be demanding she call an ambulance, but--

“I don’t under--”

“I know you never got it on the island, but, Thea, you’re almost eighteen, surely you uh--”

His skin goes white and his eyes widen. He whispers: “Did anyone ever explain you you about your period?”

“Oh!” she says. “Oh god, Ollie, just leave. I’m fine. I was _twelve_ , not two when-- just _go_. I’m fine!”

He backs out of the room and she waits until the door closes with a snick before she ducks into the bathroom.

She gets clean bandages on and is scrubbing her pajamas in the sink when her mom knocks on the door.

“Thea?”

“Mom!” she gasps. Having _this_ much supervision is… unexpected. Unwanted, even.

“Oliver woke me. Are you okay? Do you need anything?”

“I’m fine, Mom,” she calls, scrubbing harder. “I told Oliver I was fine.”

“Well, he was worried,” her mom says. “I’m worried. I know that when girls… when _women_ are under a lot of stress, when they can’t get as much food as they need-- well. If it’s been awhile, it could be scary.”

“It’s not, Mom,” Thea says. Most of the blood appears to have been rinsed away, so she unlocks her door. “Actually, uh, can you get me clean pajamas?” she calls timidly. “I forgot to get any.”

Her mom hands the clothes in, and Thea puts them on before she slips out of the bathroom, closing the door firmly behind herself.

Her mom glances between her and the door, and when Thea blocks her from reaching for the knob, she raises an eyebrow.

“Seriously Mom, it’s like a murder scene in there.” True. “I’ll get it cleaned up myself, don’t worry.”

“Thea--”

“Mom, it’s a little gross for me to ask other people to clean up my own bodily fluids,” she says. “And selfish.”

Her mom forces a smile.

“Thea, what happened on the ship--”

“Mom, please,” Thea says, rubbing her face. “I don’t want to talk about that right now.” Truth. “Ever.” Truth.

She hadn’t told Nyssa, or Oliver, or Shado or Slade, even though they’d all have listened if she’d tried.

“No,” her mom says, grabbing her hand and holding it in both of hers. “No, Thea, I’m not asking that. I’m just saying-- What I’m trying to say is that you are my _daughter_ , and I love you more than anything in the world, and nothing will ever change that. Nothing.”

Thea snorts, but her mom’s hands squeeze tight. “If you told me that you’d turned to _cannibalism_ I’d still love you, sweetheart. _Nothing_ can change that.”

“Cannibalism?” Thea says, wrinkling her nose. “Eww, mom, no.”

“Well. That’s the worst thing I could think of,” her mom says primly, shaking her hair back.

Thea smiles at her. “I promise I never ate anyone,” she says, then, after a long pause, “I didn’t cook first.”

Her mom laughs and just like that, the weird intensity of her concern is gone, and Thea feels better than she has in years.

Guiltily, she thinks of Nyssa, who will have no idea where she is, if Thea is one to judge Ra’s.

And she’s played chess with the Demon’s Head often enough that she thinks she _is_.


	4. Chapter 4

The second time she meets the hooded vigilante, she’s outside the Merlyn Global Group building, trying to decide if she’d have enough time to break into Malcolm Merlyn’s office before he heard her and went for the panic room that was suspiciously missing from the building’s blueprints.

Thea has just decided ‘probably not’, and she doesn’t want to blow her cover, when she sees _him_ at street level, facing off with some local muscle.

She fires an arrow into one of his attackers, and they all look up, giving him a window in which to either escape or incapacitate them, and she settles in to watch him fight, admiring his form and brutality, wondering who had taught him.

Something about the way he uses the bow as a staff reminds her of something, but it’s not League training, and besides, she’d have heard if anyone had recently gone rogue.

She’s pretty sure, at least.

He fires a grapnel and comes up beside her on the roof, and she drops her bow, draws her scimitars.

If _his_ is the death she’s going to bring about, there’s no use trying to pin it on _him_ after all, and for close quarters, she prefers the curved blades.

He manages to disarm her with a strong blow to her left wrist, and she hopes to god it isn’t fractured because how the hell she’d explain _that_ with an entire _family_ breathing down her neck--

“I helped you!” she calls out, glad she’d picked up a voice modulator of her own-- the League has decent contacts in the city, and she’d also picked up a pretty nice handbag someone was fencing.

“I didn’t ask you to!” he snarls, and she frowns, ducks his next attack, comes up with a wicked slash that catches in his armor.

He sucks in a harsh breath and seizes her wrist in a gloved hand.

Thea uses his hold to rush forward, brings a knee up between his legs, and he avoids it, laughs. “You know,” he says, sounding not-at-all winded. “I pictured you as a little classier than that.”

She bares her teeth, even though she’s got her mask up and he can only see her eyes. “You know, I pictured _you_ as a lot more willing to accept help.”

“I don’t _need_ your help,” he insists, and she finally breaks his grip, using her still-throbbing other hand to land a blow to his neck.

He chokes on a noise of pain, and _pushes_ her, and his brute force is _good_ but her balance is better, and she skips back an extra pace and bends to grab one of her dropped swords.

He kicks at the blade, but it’s _obvious_ , so she backs up another step.

“Look,” she tells him. “I’m not here for you. I don’t want to fight.”

“You’re fighting anyway,” he says, advancing on her. Everything about him is predatory, frightening, and her heart is hammering from exertion: she hasn’t been able to spar with another human since she’s come to Starling City, and he’s so-- physical about the fight that it’s like no other sparring she’s done before.

He goes for her throat, the exact move she’d made earlier, and she takes another step back, another, and then--

He catches her before she can actually fall from the roof, and she gasps. His chest is heaving against her clinging hands, and she unconsciously wraps her right hand in the strap of his quiver.

“I’ve got you,” he says.

“Thought we were fighting,” comes her breathless reply.

“Thought you didn’t want to,” he says. He backs away from the edge of the rooftop, dragging her with him, one step at a time, and when he lets her go, her knees give out from under her, and her hand catches in the strap.

His fingers are gentle as he untangles her, eases her down on the rooftop.

When she looks up, he is gone.

***

Thea fights the hooded vigilante three more times, and always, they fight to a draw and one of them escapes, never again with the level of injury of that first encounter. He’s not her target, and she won’t kill without cause; he’s bringing order to her city, and she can respect that, even though his constant battles with China White aren’t productive or useful to her.

Whatever; she can’t have everything in life, especially not when it comes to a hooded vigilante with his own goals and motives.

When Thea finally meets China White, who has decided, for some reason, to _personally_ work in Starling City, the hooded vigilante is already there, and Thea isn’t sure what to do. If the vigilante kills her, a massive vacuum will open up in the crime syndicates of the east, and she could see Ra’s sending in a few men to take the reigns, cement things for the world, for himself, but--

Just as easily, many assassins might _die_ ; the ones Ra’s _trusts_ , and Nyssa can’t afford to lose allies.

“Hey!” she shouts, dropping from her concealed hiding place in the rafters.

Both of them look at her, and she smiles. In Mandarin she says _”The League has business here;_ yours _is concluded._ ”

She grimaces, and the hooded vigilante strides forward, adding. _”Like the girl says: leave.”_

_”The Triad doesn’t take the word of little girls and upstarts,_ ” China White sneers, but she puts her weapon away. She believes Thea is who she claims to be, she’s just trying to save face, which Thea respects.

_”My lord Ra’s has great respect for how far you have come, Wei,”_ Thea says gently. “ _My Beloved knows she can count you as an ally. Please, leave. The League cannot afford the attention your organization brings._ ”

“ _If the Songbird makes the request,_ ” China White says, inclining her head slightly. “ _Our business is concluded anyway. Do you require--_ ”

Thea interrupts her, “ _I work alone._ ”

China White’s lip quirks, and they both know she is lying, but China White bows very very slightly, and Thea inclines her own body more respectfully, and then she is alone with the hooded man.

“ _Songbird_?” he asks, the word coming out in Mandarin.

“Al Ta-er,” she corrects. “The translation is… less poetic than that.”

“Altair?” he asks, frowning.

Thea shrugs. “If you like,” she replies, even if the pronunciation is accented oddly in his English. His Mandarin had been just as accented, she thought.

He snorts. “So, little bird,” he says. “What are you here for?”

“I’m an assassin,” she says plainly. “I’m here to assassinate someone.”

He laughs, and it sounds weird and warped through the voice modulator. “Me?” he asks after long moments.

“You are… an unknown quantity,” she says. “I don’t wish to interfere with your mission, though I would like to know your master. Whatever he pays you can’t be as good as what the League can offer.”

“The League is a myth,” the man said flatly.

“If you like,” she repeats, shrugging.

“I have no master,” he says after a few moments of tense silence. “I… am trying to save this city.”

“I loved this city,” Thea tells him, honestly. “I-- I won’t get in your way. And if you need assistance-- we can work something out.”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve got things under control,” he said testily.

“You leave a trail of evidence anyone could follow,” she replies. “But as long as your work continues, mine remains hidden, so I can’t exactly complain.”

He laughs again. “You’re American,” he says suddenly.

“I was,” she says. “I’m-- I am.”

Suddenly, he is in her space and she has a dagger to his throat. She can feel the way the steel trembles when he swallows.

“I wouldn’t hurt you,” he says lowly.

“Why not?” she asks. “Because I’m an ally or because I’m a girl?”

He shifts and the shadows flicker across his jaw. The only features she can make out are the whites of his eyes, glinting in reflected streetlights. “Because you’re not on the list,” he replies, and then he is gone.

***

Thea gets better at pretending to be Thea Queen, and her mom seems relieved.

Oliver starts seeing Laurel again, and Thea’s happy for them, she really is. She just-- she doesn’t like sleeping alone during rainstorms either.

Malcolm Merlyn comes to dinner more and more frequently, and then, one day, the hooded vigilante attacks her mom.

As soon as she can break free of Malcolm and Walter, she shoves her armor on and doesn’t bother with her hair, with a hood. She wraps a scarf around her head, her face, pins it in place, all while stalking around the area of the Glades she knows he has a safehouse in.

She’s cursing, kicking a pallet in an alley, when suddenly he’s there.

She has him pinned to the alley wall in moments, steel at his throat.

“Is _Moira Queen_ on your list?” she hisses.

“No,” he says. “No. I thought-- it doesn’t matter what I thought. I was wrong.”

He sounds-- wrecked, even beneath the voice modulator, and she draws back, stares at him. There’s a streak of crimson on his arm, and she jerks him away from the wall, shines a light to make sure he hasn’t left any physical evidence behind.

“You need medical care,” she says. “You have a safehouse?”

He hesitates. She sighs; would run her hands through her hair if she had anything other than a scarf concealing her identity. “I’m not-- look. I just-- Moira Queen isn’t any kind of criminal, okay?”

“Why do you care so much?” he demands, eyes flashing beneath his hood. “What _is_ she to you?”

“I used to work there,” Thea lies. “I was bored, you know, deskwork. But she’s a good boss.”

“Better than the League?”

“The League is my _family_ ,” she says, feeling a twinge of regret when she thinks of Ollie. Except Ollie is barely around, anymore, not like he had been in the first week she’d been home, and--

He hadn’t even come to see mom in the hospital. Was Laurel _that_ much more important than them?

The thought hurt, and she shoved it aside, wishing, for the first time since coming home, that she still felt seawater-cold where she was supposed to feel warmth, because this _ache_ wasn’t worth it.

“Yeah? Your _family_ sent you out here alone when you’re obviously used to working with a partner, to kill someone who is _clearly_ unkillable?”

“I am the Beloved to the Heir,” she snapped. “It is my responsibility, my _privilege_ , to keep her from harm. And the Magician was the greatest of Al Owal’s proteges.”

“That’s who you’re looking for? Someone called the Magician?” the vigilante asks, pressing her back, hand splayed firm over her sternum. She can feel the warmth of his hand through her armor, and she notices that his skin is bare. There are silvery scars on his knuckles, just visible in the low, reflecting light from the street beyond. He’d trained long, then.

“He is-- he spreads dissension,” she says, and her back hits the wall, and he looms over her. She’s too small, and she’ll probably never hit the growth she would have if she’d grown up here, safe in Starling City.

“I have my own _responsibilities_ to my family,” the vigilante said, looming. 

She shuts her eyes when he ducks his head down to her, presses his forehead to hers.

His voice echoes behind the modulator; she can almost hear it. It could be nice, gentle, she thinks, if it weren’t for the digital alterations.

“You always say that you are Beloved,” he says. “Even to China White.”

She sucks in air desperately, but it’s hot between then, and this close she can _smell_ him: leather and blood and the sour smell of fear that’s been layered over with clean sweat from exertion.

“But you’re as alone as I am, Altair,” he says. “Aren’t you?”

There’s tension in the voice behind the modulator, and she aches to hear it.

“I--”

His lips press to one closed eyelid, then the other, and he draws away. She wonders why, for a second, then realizes her eyes are the only part of her that is bare right now.

“She made me everything I am,” Thea says, even though she hardly owes this stranger an explanation. “I owe her--”

“Where is she?” he asks, interrupting.

“Home,” she says, not adding _I hope_.

He nods. “Sorry,” he says after a moment. “I-- you could _know_ me, and I--”

“I miss that,” she says. “Honesty. But-- I can’t take off my mask.”

He laughs at that.

“You still need that shoulder looked at,” she says.

“I’ll figure something out,” he replies. “Do you need… will you be okay?”

“Yeah,” she says, even though it is a lie.

***

Ollie spends the whole night with Laurel, and when he finally stumbles back home, Thea is furious.

***

“Christmas.” Oliver says to her one evening, and she stops short and stares at him.

“What?” she asks. She’s braiding her hair for dinner with the city’s ruling class, and Oliver is leaning in the doorway to her bathroom.

“It’s December,” he says.

“I don’t know about you,” she says, “But we didn’t really celebrate Christmas where I was these last five years.”

“Me either, but Digg let me know that it was that time of year, and whatever _we_ might think, there’s something really important I need to know.”

“Hmm?” she asks, deciding, after staring at the way the sapphires complemented her shirt next to the opals, on wearing her opals. Merlyn was supposed to be there too, and the hairpins were thicker, the ends razor sharp.

The sapphires were closer to decorative.

Oliver steps forward to do the clasp on her necklace. “Why haven’t Mom and Walter done anything about it?”

“I’m… confused, Ollie,” Thea says.

“There’s no decorations, no tree, no stockings. Thanksgiving was two weeks ago.”

Thea hesitates, trying to draw on her hazy childhood memories and getting stuck on the Amazo instead, on Ivo snarling _Merry Christmas_ in her ear, on torturing those prisoners as a special treat.

“Hey, hey,” Oliver says, squeezing both her shoulders and making eye contact through the mirror. “We’re right here, not… not there.”

“Dr. Ivo had some interesting ideas about Christmas presents,” she tells him, and it’s the most she’s ever said about the Amazo to anyone, ever.

He leans forward, tucking her against his chest and kissing her temple. “Well, let’s make a new memory for Christmas.”

“After dinner,” she says.

“After dinner,” he agrees.

***

She thinks Merlyn might be taunting her. She can’t get close to him while he’s alone, can’t even find out where he _is_ when he’s alone, but he comes to her house, eats food at _her_ table, and she can’t even _poison_ him because the police commissioner is sitting right across from him.

And chaos is anathema.

Plus, she personally isn’t a fan of implicating her family in his death.

“I hate this,” she mutters, and Oliver reaches across her for some bread.

“Breathe,” he advises.

The banter turns to the hooded vigilante, and Thea suppresses her instinctive desire to defend him; he’s a good person, she thinks. Whatever mission he’s on, he hasn’t targeted anyone who is _innocent_ , and that’s _important_.

Ra’s would be pleased by the man’s honor, and the police commissioner, _everyone_ , is nothing but vitriol.

Oliver tries to keep things light, but then everyone leaves, and Thea races to the den to turn on the news.

“He already threatened Adam Hunt,” she tells Oliver, who she can sense behind her. “He wouldn’t… he’s a good man.”

“Thea,” Oliver says.

Thea shrugs, shuts off the tv, brushes past him. “I’m sure _Laurel_ needs you to comfort her,” she snaps, and when she gets to her room, she slams the door and locks it to be sure no one will walk in to find her missing.

***

She finds the hooded vigilante exactly where she expects to, and she wonders why the police aren’t waiting en masse to swarm him.

“Altair,” he says.

“Hood guy,” she replies, thinking of Ollie at dinner, who had been _her_ Ollie again, for just a little while.

He snorts.

“I came to tell you, this?” She glances down at the bloodstain, then back up at hm. “It isn’t me.”

“I know,” he replies.

“Really?” she asks. “I mean, I’ve got great aim with this thing.”

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s how I know. He’s not your target, your… Magician.”

“True,” she says, looking at the dried spill of blood.

“Come here,” he says.

She does. Close, he touches her cheek, draws her mask down.

“I like your eye-mask thing,” he says. “That’s new.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I thought you might.”

He laughs.

“I tried one. Interferes with my peripheral vision,” he says.

“Not as much as a hood,” she protests, and he kisses her.

He kisses nothing at all like Nyssa, and she closes her eyes and presses up. He’s quick to take that as permission, picking her up easily, and she wraps her legs around his waist and pushes her hands under his hood, into his hair.

It’s too short to grab, so she just presses her fingers tight to his scalp when he bites her lip.

She moans, and he presses her to the wall.

The armor is too constricting to work around, though they both spend a few futile minutes trying and failing, and the vigilante grumbles a protest and she tips her head back to laugh.

He nips at her jaw, her throat where is is exposed, her earlobe, and she arches into him, desperate for friction.

“This isn’t--” he mumbles between kisses. “This isn’t working.”

“I know,” she says. There is a siren in the distance.

“We should--”

“Yeah,” she replies.

“I was going to say, try this again,” he says, and this close she can feel the humor of his smile.

She’s pretty sure he’d be handsome, if she could see his face.

She’s equally sure it wouldn’t matter if he weren’t.

***

She finds a phone, sleek and black, state of the art, tucked inside her quiver that night, and she smiles.

There’s only one contact in it, and the number is blocked. She’s pretty sure if she wanted to, she could find someone who’d hack it, but there’s no real _need_ to-- she knows who left it for her.

She feels… needy, hot and cold and tingling in her own skin, and she sends a quick text, just a smiling emoticon, and then she puts on one of the designer dresses her mom bought her, swinging beads and sequins and not at all anything she can wear her deadly hair pins with.

She brushes her hair loose, finds a beaded headband in the drawers of things her mother had never thrown out, and she stares at the makeup arrayed on the counter.

She has no idea how to dress herself as Thea Queen, Bored Heiress, and it will show.

Her hair is already springing back into waves and curls despite the brushing, and she doesn’t even know if _that’s_ going to be in style.

Doesn’t even know where she would go to find someone to take her home, take her apart, take her out of her skin.

She misses being touched, having a lover, and she doesn’t know how to change that.

Frustrated, she flings her hairbrush at the wall, suppresses and angry shout.

Mr. Diggle comes rushing in regardless, and they stare at each other for long seconds.

“Everything all right, Miss Queen?” he asks blandly.

She raises an eyebrow. “Aren’t you supposed to be my brother’s bodyguard? His room’s too far away for you to have heard that.”

Mr. Diggle shrugs. “Going out tonight?”

“Probably not,” Thea says. “I forgot that I don’t know what’s cool anymore.”

Mr. Diggle frowns at her. “I’ll be right back.”

“Okay…” Thea replies, frowning back.

“Seriously, don’t move.”

“I’m not Ollie,” Thea says. “I’m not going to say I’m taking a leak and then run off with _Laurel_.”

Mr. Diggle laughs a little and shakes his head, turning just before he leaves the room to gesture at her to stay.

She sits down in front of her vanity.

She has to get out a book; her mom’s been making noise about trying to get her a GED or a diploma or something in the spring, and she’s trying to catch up on things the League hadn’t taught her. She’s got a good grasp on math and economy, astronomy and world history, but English Lit wasn’t exactly high on their list of things you’ve got to know, so she’d picked up a copy of AP English Literature for Dummies in hopes that she might figure out some of what she’s behind in.

It’s almost half an hour when he comes back, and he’s leading Sara Lance by the hand. She looks equal parts pissed and intrigued, and Thea’s feeling about the same.

“Sara Lance,” Mr. Diggle says solemnly, though there’s a glint in his eye that she thinks means he’s finding this whole thing hilarious, “Definitely knows what’s cool anymore. I’ll hold Mr. Queen’s car tonight: you ladies can join them.”

Sara snorts.

Thea smiles at her.

“You look twelve,” Sara tells her. “You’ve got to have something better for your hair.”

Thea shrugs and gestures at the pile of things next to the vanity. “Have at it,” she tells her.

***

It’s not that she meant for it to be _Sara_ , tonight.

It’s just-- Sara has the same look on her face that Thea _feels_ when she watches Laurel and Ollie being happy and in love together, and there’s something to be said about younger sibling solidarity, really.

And Sara kisses hot and sweet, and her hands are expert at undoing Thea’s designer dress in the back room of the club.

She’s got some kind of pill in her purse, and Thea laughs and accepts one, letting it dissolve under her tongue and dull her senses.

“God, I love your _hair_ ,” Sara whispers, hot in Thea’s ear, and Thea laughs and leans in for more kissing.

Thea’s pretty sure she has more experience with girls than Sara does, but Sara is arching and eager, hands sliding everywhere, leaving trails of sparks in their wake that might be more the drug than anything else.

“I hate Christmas,” Sara tells her when the club’s sound system starts to pulse out a remix of a classic carol, and Thea bites her earlobe delicately, tasting salt-sweat and the chemicals of Sara’s perfume.

“Let’s fix that,” Thea replies wickedly, and she works on getting whatever it is that’s invaded her system and is making her kiss strangers and her brother’s ex dirty little secret _out_ to the pulse of bass and manufactured cheer.

They make it back into the club, wobbling and disheveled, and Ollie’s eyes are hard and cold as he takes them in.

“What are you _on_ , Speedy,” he demands, shaking her shoulders. 

She laughs.

“Sara!” Laurel snaps. “You can’t just give that stuff to kids!”

“Thea’s not a kid,” Sara says, not nearly as affected as Thea, who is seeing sounds and hearing color. “Trust me.”

Nausea rolls through her at that, and she reels, can’t feel her feet, can’t see the floor.

Ollie catches her, picks her up like she’s twelve again and he’s safe and sweet, not a stranger.

“We’re going home,” he decrees.

“Don’ wanna,” she says. “Still hurts.”

“Shh,” he says, and she can feel them moving, and then a car.

“I didn’t know,” Sara says sullenly.

“I don’t think she’s ever done anything before,” Oliver replies. “Not like--”

“Us,” Sara finishes for him. “I’m not sorry though,” she adds.

“Sara!” Laurel snaps.

“What! She’s the best fuck I’ve had since _Ollie_ died.”


	5. Chapter 5

The only thing that changes for her, the next day, is that Oliver thinks he’s _justified_ in avoiding her, which is _fine_ , really.

She doesn’t _care_.

Well, and she has a heart to heart with her mother, and no one walks away happy.

“Thea, honey,” her mom says, letting herself into Thea’s room while Thea’s doing her morning exercises.

Thea glances over at her and groans. “Ollie told you,” she says.

“He was worried-- _I’m_ worried!” her mom replies.

“Well, I know not to take drugs I’ve never heard of before,” Thea says. “I think I learned my lesson. I’ve never had this kind of hangover.”

She _has_ actually. Dr. Ivo liked pharmocology as much as he liked everything else to do with medicine.

She steps into a new stance, stretches, breathes.

“I can… you don’t seem to be as bad off as he thought. I was wondering why he hadn’t called an ambulance…”

“Maybe he forgot about them,” she says. “Probably didn’t want Sara to get arrested, though.”

“That’s the other thing, sweetheart. Sara-- you never said anything about, well--”

Thea could make this easier, but she plain doesn’t _want _to. Her mom has never made things easy for _her_ , so why should she do any differently?__

__“Liking girls,” her mom concludes firmly._ _

__“You never said anything about Malcolm Merlyn being my father,” Thea replies, dropping her stance and glaring at her mom. “So it’s not like I’m the only one keeping secrets._ _

__Her mom is gaping, horrified. “How could you _possibly_ know that?” she demands._ _

__“Blood calls to blood,” she says, the way Ra’s had when she’d asked him. “Plus, I look nothing like Dad or Ollie, and I do look a lot like Tommy and Mr. Merlyn.”_ _

__Her mom bites her lip, and Thea realizes that she is furious, realizes equally that she will do nothing about her anger._ _

__“He can’t find out,” her mom says softly. “He can’t know. Thea, I know he seems-- I know how he seems, but he’s not a very good man.”_ _

__Thea frowns. “He doesn’t know?” she asks, feeling small. For some reason she’d thought he would know; that he’d see the poetic justice Ra’s had unleashed on him. “I thought--”_ _

__But that makes _sense_ , she realizes._ _

__“You know Robert loved you, right?” her mom says sincerely. “You know you were _his_ daughter, and he wouldn’t have traded you for anything.”_ _

__Thea shrugs, drops back into her stretch._ _

__“I know my dad drowned,” she says. “I know that island killed us all.”_ _

__“Thea!” her mom snaps._ _

__Thea laughs. “I look at you, and I think about how much I loved you, but the only thing there is cold and drowned. And Malcolm Merlyn is _evil_ , and disloyal, and all I feel about _that_ is cold. Ollie’s cold, too. He can hardly stand to have Laurel touch him, but we’re _trying_.”_ _

__Thea stops, bows to her invisible opponent, to her mother._ _

__“ _Trying is not succeeding,_ ” she says to Moira Queen in League Arabic. “ _There is only success and failure._ ”_ _

__“Thea--” her mom says, shaking her head. “If… if you would rather be with girls, that’s okay, you know that, right? That’s… that’s what I came up here for. To let you know I still love you.”_ _

__“Mom…” Thea says, feeling desperate and lonely._ _

__“Oh,” her mom hesitates on the threshold of Thea’s room. “And you’re grounded.”_ _

__Thea shuts her eyes, hard, and listens to the click-click-click as her mom walks back down the hallway._ _

____

***

She texts the hooded vigilante: _please tell me you need backup_.

His reply is a location, and she puts on her armor, maybe leaving a few key pieces more loosely buckled than she normally might, maybe grabbing condoms from Oliver’s room (empty again).

He’s there when she arrives, and he whirls at her near-silent approach, arrow nocked before he recognizes her.

“Altair,” he says. The weird, slurred pronunciation is starting to grow on her.

“Vigilante,” she replies in the same tone. “So, what’s the plan?”

He shakes his head, moves toward her, hands going to her shoulders, sliding down to her sides.

“This,” he says, low and even, and then he’s kissing her again, and it’s a lot more physical than things had been with Sara, who was like cotton candy and liquor.

“Okay,” she says, still feeling vast and empty and cold, the way she has since she last saw him.

Maybe since the last time Ollie had told her he couldn’t sleep because of the rain and curled up next to her in her empty bed.

Still, this is _physical_ , not emotional, and her hands drop to her belt. She unbuckles it, shimmies out of leather-and-kevlar sholva, and his hands are warm on her skin, finally.

She takes off her gloves, slides her hand along his jaw, behind his head. He laughs into the kiss and draws back a little.

“You okay?” he asks, and she wonders about that for one second, two, and then his thumb brushes past the healing scar where he’d shot her.

Sara hadn’t even noticed the damn thing.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she says. “I’ve got, uh, condoms?” she says, fumbling for them.

He laughs again. “Me too, bird-woman,” he replies. “But I meant more than that. Do you even… with men?”

Thea laughs, sharp and shrill in her surprise. “I mean, I don’t know. I never tried.”

Well. There is truth and there is _truth_ , and she couldn’t even take off her mask, couldn’t see his face in the near-blackness of the warehouse at night; he didn’t need all of her truth.

He strokes his thumbs firmly down her thighs, doesn’t insult her by asking again, just jerks her sholva down further, and flips her so her back is pressed hard against his chest. She reaches back, finds his biceps, grips them tight, and his groan is low and encouraging in her ear.

The first pressure is _too much_ , and she hears herself whimper even though she’s had worse pain for worse reasons, and he stops, wraps one arm around her waist, slides the other down between her legs, clumsier than Nyssa, than _Sara_ had been, so she curls her hand around his, shows him where she likes it.

“God,” he hisses, and he presses again. She controls her reaction, bites her lip, and she _likes_ this, she thinks, likes being entirely surrounded; it makes her feel raw and open, and his hand is finding a steady, perfect rhythm on her clit even as he rocks shallowly inside her.

She feels _consumed_ and she leans her head back against his shoulder. He takes that as an opportunity to nudge aside her scarves, to nuzzle her throat, to _bite_ , and she shouts and trembles, hands going for his hair, his cheek, anything that’s _skin_.

“It’s okay, Altair,” he murmurs into her throat, thrusts hard now, moving them both so she wishes she had something to cling to that’s more substantial than a faceless vigilante.

“I can’t--” she grits out, and he shifts, presses a little harder with his thumb as he drags inside of her, and she tumbles harder over the edge than she ever has.

“Good,” she hears him saying, “So perfect.” He bites her throat again. She whines.

“Can you-- I can’t-- can you take your pants off the rest--”

She pulls away, feeling somehow colder than before she’d come to the warehouse with the sudden _lack_ of him. She unlaces a boot, kicks it off, shoves her sholva the rest of the way down, and she’s barely gotten her foot free before he’s circled to face her, picking her up by the hips and crushing her against his chest so he can kiss her like he’s drowning.

The change in angle is exquisite, and there’s not even a little pain anymore when he presses inside of her again, but the way he’s holding her means she can’t get a hand between them to try for another orgasm.

He staggers forward, and she’s somewhat convinced they’re going to fall, somewhat convinced she doesn’t care, and then suddenly there’s a surface under her hips, and he’s pushing her back, hand brushing over her breast, gliding down to her thighs, pressing at the wound he’d left and then, when she arches in response, groaning long and low and standing over her, tense and it's like the moment is _frozen_ , too much happening and not enough of it things she understands, and then he sucks in a breath and leans forward, his forehead sweaty against her cheek.

They stay like that for a long time, until she's _past_ cramping and her legs are getting chilled.

She pushes at him; her voice is hoarse when she says "C'mon, you've gotta get up."

His apology is gruff, and she laughs at it.

She has to take off her gloves to get her pants back on, and when she has them done up and the armor and belt carefully buckled in place, she’s sore in places she hasn’t been sore in in months, and it’s _delicious_. She adjusts the folds of her scarves, turns back to him all in one piece again.

His shoulders are hunched, and he’s frozen, facing away from her.

Thea reaches out to him, brushes her hand over his shoulder, and he jerks around, breathing suddenly harsh, hands up in fear more than an actual defensive stance.

“Hey, hey,” she soothes, drawing her hand back slowly. “I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you-- _I’m_ not going to hurt you.”

“You should leave,” he says, cold tone made colder still by the voice modulator.

She sighs, and she can’t let him win, so she leans up to kiss him one last time before she disappears.

***

Thea walks back into her childhood home through the front door. There are garlands up, now, and her mother stops mid-word to stare at her.

Thea hitches the backpack she’d bought _just_ so she could do this higher on her shoulder and glares, daring her mom to say anything.

Her mom looks away first, turning and striding for the kitchen as if she had always planned to.

Walter watches her go, and then frowns at Thea.

“Darling, a word?” he says, and she bares her teeth at him. He ignores this, as he was always going to, and follows Thea up the stairs.

“Your mother is _trying_ ,” he tells her, and Thea doesn’t acknowledge him. “She just wants you to know that you’re still her daughter, and I think you should at least meet her halfway.”

“Trying isn’t success,” she tells him.

He stops short, looks at her. “Are you alright?” he asks, and she thinks, dimly, through the seawater chill of her innards, that he is genuinely concerned.

“I’m fine,” she says. “And I’ll keep on _being _fine no matter how many times people you pay to ask me that ask me.”__

__“You look… distraught,” he says._ _

__Thea looks at him, thinks about a world in which she had never followed Ollie onto that yacht, thinks about having had Walter as a father-figure, and not Ra’s._ _

__“I’ll handle it,” she says. “I can handle a little upset. I was never the teenaged girl she wants me to be.”_ _

__“Well,” Walter says. “You’re certainly doing a very good job pretending.”_ _

__Thea slams her door shut between them and goes to take a very long shower._ _

____

***

It storms that night, and Thea remembers blizzards on the Amazo, and the high mountain snows of Nanda Parbat, and all of it is wrong until Oliver bursts in, not even waiting for permission before he’s scrambling under her blankets.

He’s shaking from a nightmare or the chill in the halls, and he smells like alcohol and vomit and fainter, of sex, and Thea is a little disgusted that he couldn’t even be bothered to shower, but he’s been with Laurel for as long as she can remember and maybe he doesn’t even notice the scent of it when it clings to him.

“Bad dreams?” she asks.

He shakes his head. In the light from her alarm clock, she can see the wet trails of tears on his cheeks.

“Well, whatever it is can’t get you here,” she says. “Since you sicced Mr. Diggle on me somehow.”

That makes him laugh, and he rolls to his side and tugs her up against his chest. “Oh, Speedy,” he murmurs, like she is twelve and not nearly eighteen, like she matters more than Laurel or Sara or some faceless vigilante, and she sighs and settles down to sleep.

***

The first three dresses her mother suggests for the party are too short-- they’ll reveal the still-healing scar from the vigilante’s arrow, and she’s pretty sure Detective Lance will at the very least recognize it for what it is.

They’ll also show off the impressive array of fingerprint bruises on her upper thighs, and she doesn’t really want to have to blame Sara for those; besides, Sara’s closer to her size than the vigilante’s, and her hands are too small to have left the marks.

Finally, her mom gets fed up, since Thea won’t even try the dresses, and Thea watches her go before she turns to the owner of the boutique and asks if she has anything a little more modest.

She finally finds something she likes, a shimmering fall of gold and green that will go well with the emeralds in her jewelry case, and maybe Merlyn will be there. Maybe she’ll be able to complete her mission.

When her mom finally comes back, Thea has already paid with one of Ra’s’s accounts and is sitting on the bench outside, chatting with a mugger she’d met at one of the local fences. She isn’t sure if he’d recognized her, but he’d come over for a smoke when she’d called his name.

“And who is this?” her mom asks, glaring at him.

“Roy,” Thea replies. “There was a creepy guy over there, he was eying some people up, but Roy yelled at him to leave. I think he was a mugger.”

Roy snorts, rubs out his cigarette. “Anyway, it was nice seeing you, Thea,” he says. “I gotta go, though.”

She hopes he takes her advice about pickpocketing. He’s got a good build for it, and it’s less likely to get him shot by some micro-handgun hidden in a handbag.

***

“So, that boy,” her mom says from the seat across from Thea as the towncar takes them home.

“Complete stranger,” Thea replies.

“He seemed nice,” her mom continues. “Your age, probably.”

Thea snorts. “I’m not planning on marrying Sara, you know,” Thea says. “I didn’t even mean for it to be _her_ I hooked up with. But she was--”

There. Nice. Willing. Something.

“I know,” her mom says. “I just wish-- You’re very unhappy, and it hurts me to see it, Thea. I know you don’t believe me, but it’s-- I got my children back, after so long, and I--”

Thea stares at her hands. She thinks if she could cry, that she would. She remembers Oliver’s tears last night, wonders why he can when she can’t.

“Thea,” her mom says again, interrupting her thoughts. “If you wanted, we could try a psychiatrist. I know you said you didn’t want to, but maybe it will be easier to talk to a complete stranger.”

Thea snorts her disbelief, but her mom is hurting too, and it’s Thea’s fault for feeling so cold, so she nods, then shakes her head.

“After my birthday,” she says. After her birthday, her therapist will be legally required to keep her confidence, and maybe it _will_ help. She’s pretty sure Nyssa isn’t sea water and bleached bones under _her_ skin, and-- “But I won’t talk to anyone before then. I don’t want--”

“I understand,” her mom says, and the sadness in her voice means she probably truly does.

“Sorry,” Thea says. “I didn’t want--”

She thinks about picking the locks on her brother’s door, and how she can’t even remember what had driven her to his room, to the one place she never felt silly for crying.

“I don’t even know why I wanted to go with Ollie and dad so badly,” Thea admits. “I feel like I should remember, but I can’t, and it--” she shakes her head. “If it was so _damned_ important, why can’t I remember?”

Her mom makes a strangled noise, and Thea looks up.

She is crying, and Thea fumbles in her handbag for a kleenex.

***

The Christmas party is stilted and awful, and Malcolm Merlyn isn’t there, but Sara is. Sara clings close to Thea, which is strange, because even her brother isn’t this overprotective. Thea tries to get Sara alone when Sara won’t let her get anyone _else_ alone, and Sara tells her she’s _too young_ which makes her want to laugh because no one’s ever cared about her calendar age before.

Well, maybe a little. But that was in a _different_ direction and she has vowed to herself to not think of the Amazo until her birthday and her mother’s promised therapist.

When her phone buzzes in her purse, Thea is shocked. Only one person has her phone number-- she doesn’t, technically, have a phone as far as her family is concerned, and even _he_ should be with family on Christmas.

_Turn on the news_ , the message tells her, and she disappears to one of the dens that isn’t already occupied and flips on the television.

She watches the rebroadcast of the woman’s terrified recitation of her ransom, and abruptly, Thea wants nothing better than to slide her scimitar through that archer’s soft belly.

She fumbles with the phone, with typing with her thumbs on the slick glass screen, but she replies _here do yuo wan t me _which she thinks is fairly coherent.__

___How good are you at distractions?_ is the reply, and Thea smiles as she slides into her armor._ _

____

***

The vigilante’s plan is straightforward enough-- he’ll free the hostages while she keeps the other archer’s attention.

She’s not expecting--

Well.

“Al Sa-her,” she calls, and he whirls.

“Well,” he says coolly. “You’re certainly not who I was expecting.”

Thea smiles.

“I wish I could say the same of you,” she replies.

“Well?” he says, taunting, holding up both hands to show he’s going to give her a free shot.

She’s not stupid enough to fall for it; Al Owal had never quite taught her the trick of catching arrows, but Al Sa-her is his protege.

“For your crimes against the League,” she says. “For your crimes against the Heir and Ra’s, the Demon’s Head, you will be granted death.”

“Do you even know what I’ve done?” he asks, still taunting. “Did they tell you my supposed _crime_ before they nocked their little arrow and set you free?”

“No,” she replies. “Ra’s’s word is _law_. Your crime could be _jaywalking_ and I’d still kill you at his word.”

He laughs, and she can see the vigilante now, out of her periphery, though she refuses to allow her gaze to waver and give up the game.

Al Sa-her steps closer. “And what name did they give you, little girl, before they sent you off to kill the big bad Magician?”

“Her name,” the viglante snarls, snagging the Magician’s attention, “Is Altair.”

She drops her bow and draws both scimitars, coming at him from behind, watching as he tries to thrust the vigilante between them, avoiding the trick.

They can’t win, though; they’re outmatched, on unfamiliar ground. Thea wonders if she had been sent here to die after all, or if Ra’s truly thought her able to achieve this.

The vigilante shouts at her to go, and she doesn’t _want_ to, she _can’t_ , but then Merlyn shoots him and he growls instead of screaming, and she flings herself down the corridor, the hooded vigilante close behind her.

When they round the corner, he uses the wall to snap the shafts of the arrows in his shoulder, and then collapses.

“C’mon, you idiot!” she snarls, hauling him up and buddy-carrying him to the window.

It’s too long a drop in his condition. She pushes him out anyway, watching as he hits the dumpster, the alley floor. She waits for signs of life, and knows that the only chance she has of keeping him alive is to distract Merlyn. Again.

She whirls when he finds her; he hadn’t been that far behind her, and he makes a little noise of triumph, firing on her. She manages to knock the arrow out of the air, and she thinks Al Owal would be pleased with her success, and then she runs back the way they’d come.

He can’t afford _not_ to chase her, not to _kill_ her, and he does, the sounds of his footsteps echoing in the abandoned warehouse.

The police still don’t dare enter, she thinks; there’s no way for them to know that the grudge match between the vigilante and his copycat has shifted into a game of cat and mouse where the mouse had been convinced she was a cat until thirty seconds ago thought she was a cat.

She careens around a corner, into a dead end room.

Panting, she draws her scimitars for what she is sure will be the last time, and he laughs.

“Tell me, Al Ta-er,” he says, her name dropping correctly from his lips the way it never will with the vigilante. “Why did Ra’s send you? Did you want to die so badly?”

“No,” she says. “I want to live.”

“Then why?”

“Because it is my birthright,” she says.

He hesitates. She knows it is stupid, but she wants _him_ to know, despite what her mom says, despite her training.

She pushes back her hood, slides the mask down off her face, peels that last piece of disguise out from over her eyes.

“Because,” she continues, the voice modulator too far away to entirely hide her voice, not that it matters, even in this low light, because there’s no way he won’t figure it out. “I’m your daughter.”

“No,” he snarls, but he is distracted, and she breaks the window behind her with the pommel of her sword, uses her grapnel to get to a nearby roof.

She fixes her hood while she runs towards safety.


	6. Chapter 6

Mr. Diggle picks her up from a mansion which is cold and dark with news of Oliver’s motorcycle accident, and she’s sick with guilt thinking he’d gone out to find her.

At the hospital, everyone is hovering outside the room; Laurel and her mom are sitting on plastic chairs looking shocked and nervous, and Detective Lance has Walter in a corner, discussing something in low tones. As Thea reaches the huddle of family and friends, Sara walks up juggling coffees, Tommy Merlyn right behind her.

Thea stares at Tommy for long moments, realizing for the first time that _he_ is her brother too. And it’s not… bad, exactly, to think about it, but she doesn’t have the same soul-deep affection for him that she has for Oliver, and she thinks she probably never will.

“Why isn’t anyone in with him?” Thea asks, and they all stop, turn to stare at her. Mr. Diggle squeezes her shoulder, a show of solidarity that she kind of actually needs right then.

“He asked to be alone. The doctor came to talk with him, and then I tried to go back in and-- he’d like to be alone,” her mom says, and her throat is closed with upset and Laurel reaches for her.

Thea nods, shakes off Mr. Diggle’s hand, and walks into Oliver’s room.

The door swings shut silently behind her, and he looks… diminished, somehow, in the pale sheets of the hospital bed. Diminished and _wrong._

“Mr. Diggle said you were looking for me,” she says, circling him, trying to put her finger on it. He has a black eye, sprained wrist. He’s hunched like his ribs are hurting.

He has no road rash.

“You weren’t in a motorcycle accident,” she says, and the chill of _this_ realization is bottomless in ways the sea is not. She thinks: this cannot hurt me, because I have always been dead.

It hurts all the same.

“I was, Thea--” Oliver sits up, reaches for her. She lets him, but only so she can push him forward, ignoring his pained exhale.

The ties on the hospital gown stymie her for a second, but not long enough for Oliver to get his breath through fractured ribs and internal bleeding, and then she jerks it down and out of her way.

There is a pad of bandaging, clean and white and condemning, exactly where she knew it must be.

“Thea, _don’t_ ,” Oliver says, and she ignores it, ignores _him_ because surely this bandage isn’t on _his_ shoulder, and she peels it down.

Three jagged wounds that have to be from the cruel, bone-breaking arrows Merlyn had been using.

Thea says nothing, smoothing the bandage back into place and carefully retying his hospital gown. She eases him back against the pillows, and he’s watching her, dark-eyed and wary, and she recognizes the _texture_ of that gaze.

“Thirsty?” she asks brightly, entirely unprepared to have this conversation.

“Thea,” he says. “What…?”

He doesn’t know, she realizes. He _has_ to know, she thinks. It’s _obvious._

She should have known too. The timing-- _everything_ points to this, points to her Ollie.

“So you should know,” Thea says calmly. “That after Malcolm Merlyn returned from Nanda Parbat, Mom had an affair with him.”

“What?” Oliver says again, completely confused.

“So he had a daughter with her. And fifteen years later, his daughter fell into the hands of Ra’s al Ghul, who’d been looking for some means of destroying one of the most power hungry defectors he’d seen in decades.”

Oliver bit his lip. “Thea, don’t say this-- don’t--”

“So Ra’s accepted her into the League of Shadows, and he supervised her training, and he waited for an excuse to send her back to Starling City so he could correct a mistake he’d made almost twenty years prior.” Thea stares at her hands. “Ra’s has a thing for symmetry, I don’t know.”

“Thea-- what you’re saying--”

“Which part is hardest to accept? That your nemesis is my target? That, you already knew. That my biological father isn’t Robert Queen? Come on, really? Look at me. Look at you. Look at _Tommy_.”

“Thea--” She’s starting to wish he’d say something else. _Anything_ else.”

“Technically, I gave up that name when I joined the League,” she said. “They all called me little bird, and in Arabic, that’s--”

The door opens behind her, and Thea looks over her shoulder, crying again and she doesn’t even realize it until the vision of Malcolm Merlyn in a business suit is wavering and swimming.

“Get out,” she snarls, fingers finding hairpins and drawing them free. She’d worn the opals tonight, because they were her heaviest, and she refused to be unarmed with Merlyn knowing her face.

He’s staring between them, and she throws three in quick succession. He catches the first two, but the third he misses and it pierces his hand, standing out grotesquely.

He doesn’t make a sound, and Thea nods in approval.

“Get _out_ ,” she says, advancing on him. “My _brother_ almost died tonight, and I _won’t_ stand for your making things worse, Al Sa-her.

He prises her hairpin from his flesh, drops all three.

“Thea,” he says, sounding just like Oliver. “We need to talk about this.”

“Talk about what?” she asked. She’s got a knife in her pocket, and she’s got--

“DIGG!” Ollie shouts, and she jerks.

Mr. Diggle comes flying in with a taser held up and ready, and Mr. Merlyn puts up his hands.

“I see I’m not wanted. Well, you take your time with Ollie, here. Say your goodbyes, _daughter_. I’ll be seeing you shortly.”

Thea laughs, and he leaves.

Mr. Diggle picks up the hairpins from the floor, and takes them to the washbasin near the door, hesitating. “Aren’t opals dissolvable?” he asks.

“I don’t think so?” Thea replies. “And I don’t really want blood in my hair either way, so, please.”

He snorts.

Detective Lance comes in, looks between the three of them. “Oliver, Thea, is everything okay in here?”

“Mr. Merlyn wasn’t respecting Oliver’s wish for privacy,” Thea says softly, staring at the floor like she’s nervous.

“Hey,” Detective Lance says, coming up to her, his hand flapping a little like he wants to touch her. She remembers him as kind and warm and a good cook, but he’s also Laurel’s dad, and _Sara’s_. “It’s going to be okay, you know? I think your mom’s just happy both of you are okay, you know?”

Thea nods. Mr. Diggle hands her back her hairpins, and she takes them solemnly.

“Okay,” Detective Lance says. “I’m going to send everyone home; I can wait here for Thea, since god knows what that vigilante’s up to, tonight. And if he decides to target Oliver--” he shakes his head. “Well. He’s pretty vulnerable, laid up like this. And you!” he says, turning to Ollie. “Drive safer next time, you hear?”

“Yes sir,” Oliver replies, and then the three of them are alone in the room.

“Maybe Thea should--” Mr. Diggle starts to say.

Oliver interrupts him. “She’s Altair.”

Mr. Diggle freezes. “I’m sorry?” he prompts, and she cocks her head, realizing that Oliver’s told him everything.

_Everything_ -everything if the way he’s cocking his head and grimacing means anything.

“Al Ta-er,” she corrects. “Your accent sucks. All of your accents suck.”

He snorts, but he looks a little more at ease, suddenly, and Mr. Diggle doesn’t ask the question he is clearly _dying_ to ask, so Thea moves around the bed, settles on the edge of it, right next to Ollie. His fingers wrap around her wrist, and she remembers-- he’d held her arm exactly the same way when she’d broken it; dad had held her other hand, tight and upset and telling her not to cry.

“And that’s not actually the most important part,” Oliver says. “The dark archer-- he’s her Al Saher.”

“Okay,” Mr. Diggle says, settling into the visitor’s chair. “What else.”

“He’s Malcolm Merlyn,” she says, at the same time as Oliver’s “He knows who Thea is.”

Mr Diggle frowns. He is very clearly not happy with any of this, but he’s got the look of a man who will see things through til the end. “Okay,” he says. “Fine.”

“I should have brought more than just my hairpins and my locket,” Thea says.

“What’s in the locket?” Oliver asks.

“Cyanide,” she says.

***

Sara stays with Detective Lance and rides in the backseat of his car with her, fingers laced tight together with Thea’s.

She insists on walking Thea up to her room and supervises Thea changing into pajamas, climbing into bed, and then she passes her a tiny brown envelope. “If you can’t sleep,” she says. “It’s not enough to make you sick again, promise.”

She seals the promise with a soft, thorough kiss, and then breaks away, laughing carefree. Thea thinks she’s probably a little high herself. “Dad’s waiting downstairs,” she says. “Or I’d put you to bed properly.”

Thea frowns, because earlier that night Sara had been completely against _this_ but maybe she didn’t like to have sex while sober? Or maybe seeing Laurel worry about Oliver had changed her mind.

Either way-- “Thanks, Sara,” Thea says. “Good night.”

She shuts the door quietly, and there’s a murmur as she talks to the security guy who’s spending the night staring at her door, and then Thea hears footsteps and she is gone.

She can’t sleep, but she doesn’t open the brown envelope anyway.

***

The next day, Mr. Diggle tells her to call him Digg and drives her out to the Glades, to the site of Oliver’s future club, and the picture she’s been building in her head all suddenly comes clear.

She doesn’t let on what she’s thinking, though, just gets out of the car when Digg stops it, walks confidently into the former factory and looks around at concrete and construction detritus.

“This way, Miss Queen,” Digg says, gesturing at a nearly hidden door with a security keypad. He keys in the pin, doesn’t let her look.

Fair, she thinks.

“Oliver’s been thinking about inviting you-- Al Ta-er, not Thea--” he clarifies, “down here for some time. I told him it was a bad idea, and after Helena, he was inclined to agree.”

Helena, she realizes, is Helena Bertinelli, who’d been at the heart of the entire mess with China White, and Thea almost asks if Oliver had slept with her, but it seemed…

Inappropriate, somehow.

“I like it,” she says, and spots a trunk in the corner, making for it before Digg can reply. “This was Shado’s,” she tells him, and he gives her a blank look.

“He didn’t tell you about Shado?” she presses, and he shakes his head. She shrugs. “Shado taught me Mandarin. She saved my life. Well, with the Mandarin, too, but also by, you know. Shooting people with arrows.”

“Huh,” Digg says finally. “Nope, never mentioned her.”

“Well, he thinks he’s the reason she’s dead,” Thea says. “He never would blame--” she hesitates, tries, _fails_ to say the name. “The guy who killed her,” she finally manages.

Digg’s behind her, suddenly, his hands carefully unwrapping hers from around Shado’s bow, Slade’s keffiyah. “Hey, you’re here now,” he says, gentle-gentle like the tide coming in.

She tries to think of seawater and drowning and cold, but all she can think of is Dr. Ivo’s voice in her ear, taunting, torturing, except _she’s_ the one who does all the torturing, she’s--

Digg’s fingers press against her jaw and force her gaze upwards and Thea blinks at him.

“Sorry,” she says.

He shrugs. “Seen worse,” he says. “ _Oliver’s_ worse, sometimes. Wish the two of you weren’t such a pair, to be be completely honest with you.”

She shrugs. “I’d apologize, but we are who circumstance made us.”

“Nah,” Digg says, surprising her into turning around, looking at him and not the trunk of woes. “I mean, maybe a little, but I think at least some of that is your mother, your upbringing, your… character. Do you really think, say, Sara would come out on top of things like you guys did?”

Thea snorts. “I don’t know if you know this, but five years ago, Ollie _was_ Sara. And her parents raised _Laurel_ too.”

“But not you,” Digg points out. “Not Oliver.”

Thea shrugged.

“And anyway, it wasn’t anyone else on that island, it was the two of you, and like I said, you’re here now,” Diggs hug is loose, but still warm, enveloping, and she leans into it and lets herself relax against his chest.

“I am,” she whispers, and it’s kind of like a promise she knows she won’t keep, but he keeps holding her anyway.

***

Walter goes missing.

Thea’s pretty ambivalent about him, but he loves her mom, and her mom seems to like and respect him, so when her mom comes into her room later, she’s ready to try and comfort her.

Instead, she is handed an envelope.

الطائر

“Uh, Mom?” she says, turning it over in her hands. It’s been opened, and Thea flips it back over, studies her name written in jagged, rushed script on the front of it.

“I’m pretty certain it’s for you,” she says.

“Have you read it?” Thea asks, staring again at her name.

“I don’t happen to read Arabic fluently, and I expect that contains information on matters too-sensitive for a translator.”

Thea withdraws the letter, begins to read.

_My Daughter and Heir,_ it begins, which makes her bile rise, because that is how Ra’s addresses Nyssa, and ordinary fathers don’t write to their daughters so formally, and _Tommy_ is Merlyn’s heir besides.

“I don’t--”

“Read it,” Moira says, still calm, but Thea can see that her hands have a bit of a tremble to them, that her lips are white, so she reads it once, twice, then sets it aside.

“He says,” she begins, “That the crimes of which he is accused are false, and he--” he doesn’t beg for his life, because he is too arrogant to believe it is truly in danger. “He wants my help.”

“And?” her mom asks.

Thea shakes her head. “What do you-- how much do you know?”

“I know that there is such a thing as the League of Shadows,” her mom says. “And I suspect that you are somehow a member, and that Malcolm claims to be a member.”

“He was,” Thea says. “I think he tried to force Ra’s into naming him Heir, and Ra’s exiled him.”

Her mom snorts. “And I know that you wouldn’t have come home if it wasn’t for that. So yet again I owe him my happiness.”

“He has Walter, doesn’t he?” Thea asks.

Her mom sighs, droops, squeezes Thea’s knee. “I’m afraid so,” she says. “I expect you have some things to think about,” she adds, getting up and leaving the room.

“Merry Christmas,” Thea mutters under her breath.

She rips the letter to shreds, then goes to the bathroom to flush the remains away.

***

Oliver comes home from the hospital later that afternoon, and when Thea goes up to his room to see him, Laurel is between her and him, holding the door and blocking the way.

“Just give him some time, okay?” she says, and Thea nods jerkily, backs away.

Detective Lance is hovering around the mansion, because he and the doctors aren’t stupid: they recognized the arrow wounds and they’re afraid of the the vigilante, of the copycat, and Thea wants to laugh at the sheer absurdity of it except that she cannot do that any more easily than she can cry.

Sara knocks on her door an hour before dinner and shows her how to roll a marijuana cigarette and teaches her how to breath in the smoke, heady and green and hot, and they kiss in the quiet of Thea’s childhood bedroom.

Thea shows her how sex works between women with the roiling haze in her mind, muting her thoughts and fears and memories of Nyssa showing her these exact things; and Sara’s a quick learner.

“Like this?” she asks, and Thea gasps her agreement, arches her approval.

***

They are both giggling and high at dinner time, but only Raisa is there to disapprove.

***

Sara smokes another joint while Thea reads Pride and Prejudice, making notes in the margins and comparing them to the high school literature text one of her fences found her, and eventually night falls.

Detective Lance comes and checks on them, asks if it’s okay for Sara to spend the night, and Thea pretends it is.

Her bed is cold and empty with only a dead little girl in it, so she thinks it might actually be a good thing, especially since it’s looking to storm again.

It’s a little after midnight when Oliver opens her door.

She’s not sure if he thinks he can do so without waking her, and she’s not going to ask, but she watches him take in the spill of Sara’s yellow hair on Thea’s pillow, watches him frown.

“C’mon,” she tells him, lifting up the blankets like she always does.

She’s sure he’ll refuse, sure he thinks there is too much between them now, sure he’d rather forget, but he slides into her bed, motions jerky and pained, and when he lays down, Sara is between them, but he grabs Thea’s hand and twines his fingers with hers.

***

Thea wakes curled into a warm feminine body, face pressed to soft hair, palm grazing the curve of a breast, and the bed is shifting, the blankets moving, so she tightens her grip.

“Nyssa,” she murmurs, “It’s too early; they haven’t even banked the fire yet.”

“ _What?_ ” a strange voice asks in English, of all languages, and Thea drags Nyssa closer, burying her face against her chest. Her skin smells wrong, too much sweat and not enough sandalwood, but it feels _right_ , and someone’s hand is stroking her hair, long even swipes, though the angle was all wrong for it to be Nyssa.

“Go back to sleep, Speedy,” Ollie says, and then a woman-- not Nyssa. Sara? laughs low and warm.

“You still call her that?”

“She’s still my baby sister.”

“What was she saying?” Sara asks, and her hand curls into Thea’s hair too.

“Dunno,” Ollie’s voice says.

Thea mumbles confusion into Sara’s chest.

“I don’t speak Arabic,” Ollie adds. “Never needed to learn.”

“Where did she learn Arabic?” Sara asks.

“Wherever she ended up after she got off the island, I guess.”

“You know,” Sara says. “I’m starting to see the appeal.”

“Mmm?”

“You always talked about me and Laurel together, right?” Sara says. “I mean, the two of you are really fucking hot.”

Oliver’s hand is abruptly gone, and the bed shifts, and Thea opens her eyes as the door slams shut.

“Ouch,” Sara says “Whatever. Morning, babe.”

“Tea,” Thea mumbles. “My body hurts.”

“Aww,” Sara whispers, using the handful of hair she has to draw Thea up, drag her lips across Thea’s. “I know a good way to fix that.”

Thea laughs, and she’s willing to bet Oliver won’t be back, so she lets Sara slide her hands into her pajamas and slip her tongue between her lips.

***

Oliver is avoiding her. It hurts, a little, bone-deep where things can still hurt, but there is too much going on for Thea to worry about that; she meets with one of the school administrators from the preparatory academy her mom thinks she should have attended, and he brings a stack of exams from every year of school she hadn’t taken, and she completes them with him staring down at her.

He calls it an interview and she can almost believe it, except he made her skin _crawl_ the entire time she was alone with him, and she had barely said a word to him the entire time.

She eats dinner in the breakfast room with Sara and her mom and Laurel, and the three of them talk so she doesn’t have to think of anything to say.

For some reason she keeps remembering what it had felt like to torture Ollie, that first time she’d seen him since the boat had sunk, and instead of her food on her plate she sees an old car battery with electrodes; instead of the perfectly cared for greenery, she sees an old wire bedframe.

She knows none of it is real because when Oliver screams, her mom doesn’t notice.

Sara offers her oblivion, calls it Vertigo, and then Thea shows her a trick with a black silicon toy and her teeth and her tongue, and Sara gets oblivion too.

It’s not raining, that night, and Oliver never joins them.

***

Her mother doesn’t seem to realize that Sara and Laurel haven’t left, and after a few days, Tommy moves in too, quiet and sad and without fanfare, and Thea overhears him telling her mom that it doesn’t make sense.

Merlyn’s letter had been serious, then, she thinks, except that it is unthinkable.

The problem is, he wants her to choose loyalty to him, a man who has broken every promise she has ever known him to make, over her loyalty to Nyssa, which is unshakeable. Nyssa gave her every tool she has; took a broken bird in and knitted her back together, taught her how to fly, how to fight.

How to kill.

She wishes she had Nyssa at her side, to whisper advice in her ear and murmur secrets in her bed, but she has a brother whose list is not what he wanted it to be, a rejected, sad girl called Sara, and a mother who seems to know everything but is pretending to know nothing.

“I miss Walter,” she admits to Sara, who has picked up Pride and Prejudice and is reading it, apparently out of boredom. Thea has nothing to read because the school administrator hasn’t come back with her results, and she’d like to pick up something in Chinese or Arabic just to remember the tastes of the words, and she’d have to leave home to do that.

“Why?” Sara asks, which is kind of nice. Everyone else is content to leave her where she lies, wrapped in kelp and devoured by fish, drowned and drifting. Everyone but Sara.

“He made Mom happy,” Thea says. “I don’t think even Dad did that, sometimes.”

Sara hums acknowledgement, reads a humorous line of dialogue aloud, stumbling over the words like she’s not used to reading at all.

Thea should be hunting Merlyn, but she hasn’t checked either cell phone in days.


	7. Chapter 7

“Hi, thanks for meeting with me,” the blonde woman babbles, and then she catches sight of Thea and her eyes narrow. “Wait, did you-- you brought your little sister to a super secret clandestine meeting with an IT girl?”

Thea smiles tightly at the woman, knows it doesn’t reach her eyes.

Oliver shrugs. “You said it was important. I brought the only two people I trust.”

“Uh…” the woman says. “Okay? I guess. Are you even legal to drive?” she asks.

Thea frowns, opening her clutch and sifting through her ids. “Yes,” she says finally, pulling out a driver's license with her actual name and date of birth on it, issued by the Starling City DMV. “I apparently am.”

That was actually useful, she thought. Well, at least Ra’s had thought of everything; or whoever Ra’s had put in charge of outfitting her had.

“You are?” Oliver asks, holding out a hand for the ID when Felicity’s done examining it. “So you are. What are the odds this is legit?”

“Uh, four-to-one?” Thea replies. “Depending how thorough the League was.”

“O-kay,” Felicity says slowly. “I have no idea why I’m trusting you. And this is like-- this is _not_ helping? But I mean, Walter’s missing, and I-- I didn’t know who else I _could_ trust.”

“This is about Walter?” Thea prompts. She still hasn’t figured out how Walter ties into it all, or Oliver’s list, though it _has_ to.

“Yeah,” Felicity replies. “Look, so, you know I’ve been doing you… favors. But I was doing _him_ favors too.”

Thea opens her mouth, but Felicity claps a hand to her lips and laughs nervously. “Not uh-- not like that! I swear, it’s just-- he found a book with all of these.. names.” She pulls a little book out of her purse.

Oliver takes it from her, scans the pages, frowning.

“It’s the same list the vigilante is using to pick his targets,” Felicity says in a low voice. “Almost everyone he’s gone after? Their name is in this book.”

Thea grabs the book from Oliver before he can reply. “ _This_ is the list?” she asks, flipping through it. “How did you get this?”

“Walter brought it to me,” Felicity says. “He found it in… he found it in your mom’s stuff.”

“Hmm,” Thea says. “I knew she was involved, but-- how?”

“No, seriously,” Felicity says. “Why is she _here_.”

“I think I’m here to kill the man who wrote this list,” Thea admits, not looking at Oliver. There are tenets of secrecy, of course, for the League, but Felicity is already involved, and therefore she is in danger. “Walter knows you have this?”

“Yes,” Felicity says. “Did you say _kill_?”

“Yes,” Thea says. “I know the writer as Al Sa-her; the Magician.”

“What is he, a tarot card?”

Thea snorts. 

“Okay, but you say the man-- how do we know it’s not, you know,” Felicity swallows, doesn’t suggest it. “You know what? Never mind. There’s something else. Your mom had the Queen’s Gambit salvaged, and she’s got it in a warehouse.”

“Where,” Oliver grits out.

“Uh--” Felicity says, eyes round behind her glasses.

“What he means is, that’s exciting new information, and we’d very much appreciate the address,” Thea says, feigning bright tones.

“Are you sure?” she asks. “Because I mean, I haven’t, uh, survived horrific tragedy or anything, but this is. Uhm. Heavy. And I don’t want--”

“We can handle it,” Thea says. “It’ll give us closure, if anything.”

“Right,” Felicity says. “I mean, that _is_ why I came.”

She passes an index card across the table to them, and then Oliver leaves money on the table and gets up to leave.

“Uh, it was nice meeting you?” Thea says. Felicity nods, and Thea trails after Oliver to the exit where Digg is holding the door for them.

***

“Ollie,” Thea says in the uncomfortable silence of the car. “You need to--”

Oliver gestures angrily and sends a significant glance in Digg’s direction.

“Hey, don’t look at me, man,” Digg says. “I ain’t going to get involved in whatever _this_ is.”

Thea frowns at him.

“I’m sorry you hate me,” Thea begins. “But I thought I could rescue you, like this. Only it turns out you got rescued by some fishermen instead, and I’ve got-- I swore an oath.”

“I’m not-- I don’t _hate_ you!” Oliver says, looking horrified.

Thea frowns at him. “Are you… what?”

“I’m just-- it’s a lot to come to terms with!”

“Which parts?” Thea asks. “The fact that I’m not the terrified little girl you thought came home? Or the fact that you’re not the only _killer_ in the family?”

“I-- the way I _treated_ you! You’re my _sister_. If I found out someone else had… had… _done that_ with you, I’d rip him to _shreds_.”

“Ollie,” Thea sneers. “I’ve got news for you. _You weren’t my_ first.”

Ollie glances at Digg, who is studiously looking out the window.

“Thea, you think I don’t _know_?” he asks, leaning forward, grabbing her wrists. She’s shaking, she realizes. “That doesn’t make it _better_ , Speedy. You’re seventeen. You should have-- a hotel room and, and, I don’t know.”

“Rose petals?” Digg interjects, wryness twisting his tone. When Thea looks at him, he is still staring out the window.

“Not. Helping.” Oliver grits out.

“It’s not important,” Thea says. “What matters is figuring out what Merlyn is _planning_ , and how the list ties in. We didn’t get a chance to talk about it before, but did you _know_ you were chasing Merlyn?”

“I still don’t know that now,” Oliver says. “The list-- Dad gave it to me before he died, and he said I needed to right his wrongs.”

“Wait,” Thea says, holding up a hand and shaking her head. “I thought Dad drowned?”

Oliver doesn’t reply.

Thea opens her mouth, but Oliver has completely shut down and is staring just as intently out the window as Digg, and she doesn’t want to start a fight, especially one she’s not certain she can win.

***

“I need a foreign language,” Thea repeats the school administrator, stunned. “Do you offer Mandarin?”

He stares at her. “We expect a certain degree of, ah, _worldliness_ , from our graduates, and one of our unbendable requirements is at least two years of education in a single foreign language.”

“Do you offer Mandarin?” Thea repeats, rolling her eyes and trying really hard not to imagine what it would feel like to kill this man.

He still makes her skin crawl just to be near, and he looks at her with a certain hunger that she is all-too acquainted with.

“Mandarin is an incredibly complex language, one of the most difficult for our native-English speaking students to master, and I feel it might be best for you to take something a little less… ambitious. But you should be able to graduate before you are twenty. Understand that we are making a special case for your… ah… circumstances.”

“I’m fluent in Mandarin. I’m also pretty conversant in a couple of southern Chinese dialects. Oh, and I’m pretty good at Tibetan.”

The man has the audacity to _snort_ at her, and all at once, Thea is furious.

“Where on _earth_ would you have learned _that_ ,” he demands. “No, I think French will be best. Then you can spend even more time in Paris.”

“ _China_ ,” Thea growls, standing up angrily from the table. “I learned Chinese in _China_.”

“You spent five years _shipwrecked,_ ” he replies. “When did you find the time to visit China? And _do_ sit down. Your behavior is hardly what we expect in our academy.”

“I was shipwrecked in _China_!” Thea snaps, and then she leaves, because if she doesn’t, she _will_ kill him; drag a knife through his belly and stand over him as his stomach acid burns through his organs and he screams his way toward oblivion.

***

Sara and Oliver are in her room; Sara is straddling his lap and his hands are bunched in her yellow hair. Her shirt’s all rucked up and his pants are unzipped.

Thea sighs heavily, and slams the door behind her when she leaves.

***

Her mom is in the solar with Laurel.

“Hey, Thea,” Laurel says. “Have you seen Ollie? He isn’t in his room.”

“Nope,” Thea says calmly, wondering why Laurel even _bothers_. “Not since this morning, at least.”

“How did your meeting go?” her mom asks. “What did he say about re-enrollment?”

“He’s an idiot,” Thea says, and her words seem distant, unconnected with herself. “I’ll just take the GED or something.”

“Thea!”

“I don’t need the degree anyway,” Thea says. “ _You_ know that.”

“I just want you to have as normal a life as--”

“As you can _pay for_?” Thea demands. “A normal life, hah! Is that what you promised _Walter_ before-- before he went missing?”

“Thea, that is enough. Now, come here. We need to make sure that Mr. Bevins doesn’t leave without accepting you as a student,” he mom orders, taking Thea’s arm and dragging her back into the hall.

“Mr. Bevins, I’m terribly sorry for Thea’s behavior,” her mom calls, stopping the administrator in his tracks. If he’d been trying to leave the mansion, he’d been going the wrong way from the office, but the house was huge and confusing.

“ _My_ behavior?” Thea asks. “He asked how I could know Mandarin!”

“Thea--”

“I mean, does he not see the news? Does he just go through life completely unaware of what country claims the majority of islands in the North _China_ Sea? I don’t think I _want_ to go to a school that he runs.”

He’s turning _purple_ and Thea feels a sick little thrill of enjoyment.

“Darling, I’m sure that he was just trying to be polite,” her mom says. “Not everyone is going to dwell on the accident like you think they are.”

The administrator coughs. “Miss Queen, I didn’t want to upset you, is all.”

“So you _do_ offer Mandarin. Can I test out of the first three semesters of _that_ too?” Thea asks. “And-- and graduate like a normal girl?”

Even she isn’t sure how much of this is an act. Suddenly, the idea has a shining, perfect appeal to it. No League, no Magician, no Vigilante, no list.

No Queen’s Gambit to suck her down and drown her and drown her and never stop.

“There will have to be an oral component to the testing. You’ll need to meet with the director of our Mandarin program,” he says looking deeply discomfited. “I know your mother said to involve as few people as possible, but--”

“If it means I don’t have to spend another two years in school,” Thea says, “I’ll manage.”

***

The examination comes the next morning, before most of the house is even awake. Thea ended up spending the night in Ollie’s bedroom because he and Sara had passed out in hers, and she didn’t really care to disturb either of them, so she was up early, fixing herself tea based on a recipe she’d gotten from a little Nepalese restaurant at the edge of the Glades, when someone from the gatehouse buzzes up.

“Hey Thea,” the man says, smiling at her. “We’ve got someone from that academy Ollie got kicked out of here, says she’s expected.”

“She the Mandarin teacher?” Thea asks, swirling her tea in her cup.

“Says so.”

“Good enough for me,” Thea replies, “Send her up to the house. I’m in the kitchen, if you don’t mind having someone escort her; I don’t think anyone is awake to answer the door.”

“You got it, boss,” he says just before he cuts the connection.

***

“Do you uh-- the administrator guy, he always wanted to be in Dad’s office for this stuff,” Thea offers.

The woman shakes her head and smiles tightly at Thea. “The kitchen is probably a great deal more comfortable, I think, than a dead billionaire’s office.”

Thea snorts. “You’re not wrong. Tea? It’s uh, it’s called noon chai, apparently.” Nyssa had always just called it tea. “We’ve got other kinds, but no one is awake but me.”

“That sounds perfect,” the woman says. “ _Shall we begin?_ ” she asks in Mandarin, and Thea gives her the correct affirmative.

***

Thea walks back into her room to Sara and Oliver lazily making out on the rug in front of her window, and she sighs.

“If you’re going to do this, you really should break up with Laurel first,” Thea says. “And probably wait for the motorcycle accident to… you know. Heal.”

“Oh look, babe,” Sara whispers huskily. “Thea’s back. And she’s wearing your clothes.”

Oliver makes a low noise, and Thea’s throat goes dry. He sounds just like he had when she’d thought he was the vigilante.

Or, well, he’d always been the vigilante, but…

“C’mon Thea,” Sara says, still in that whisper, and Thea crosses the room to them, even though she knows she shouldn’t.

Sara twines her fingers with Thea’s, pulls her down, kisses her.

Oliver is lying on his back between them, and Thea braces one hand on his chest, not too much pressure because she remembers his broken ribs, and the other she carefully slides into Sara’s hair.

She’d spent the morning speaking in Mandarin to a woman who was nothing like Shado; she decides that spending the afternoon making love to a woman who is nothing like Nyssa makes as much sense, if not more.

Sara groans, leans into the kiss. Her hand was already busy on Oliver’s cock, which makes Thea shiver to even _think_ about, and the other is now cupping Thea’s breast, just a little brush of her thumb to Thea’s nipple through Oliver’s shirt, but it’s more than she’s ready for, and she whines and leans forward, wanting _more_.

“Like that? See, you’re not the only one who’s got dirty little tricks, Thea,” Sara says, drawing back so she can twist and kiss Oliver.

It’s dirty and open-mouthed, and Thea watches, trying to decide whether she should be feeling anything at all about the sight; wondering if she would like it better if Nyssa were kissing Ollie, or kissing Sara, or just there at all with the three of them.

“I--” Thea says, and then she nudges Sara out of the way, presses her own mouth to Ollie’s.

“God,” Sara breathes, and there’s a rustle of clothing that Thea ignores, focusing instead on making sure her kiss is slow and sweet, and… and _rose petals_ , like Digg had said, and Oliver slides a hand smooth and slow through her hair.

Sara’s whuff of breath reads as amusement, and Thea smiles into the kiss.

“God, Thea,” Ollie says, carefully guiding her head away so they both can breathe.

“Yep,” Sara says. “Definitely seeing the appeal. You know, Ollie, you’re _allowed_ to be sweet to girls who _aren’t_ your sister in the bedroom too.”

Thea flips her off, and Sara laughs aloud, carefully navigating Ollie’s body to get up next to Thea, to ruck her shirt up and bite her nipple.

Thea arches into the surety of pain, and Oliver makes another low, animal noise.

“She likes it rough, anyway,” Sara says. “It’s the only way to get her to react, see?”

Thea bites her lip, pulls the shirt off over her head, and reaches for Sara, who is already completely naked, to _show_ Oliver what Sara likes.

***

Sara and Laurel leave after dinner, and Sara winks at Thea as the door closes.

“We should check out that warehouse,” Oliver says solemnly, and Thea smacks him.

There is more pain in his sharp exhale than there should be.

“ _You_ should go sleep. In a bed. You’re not invincible, you know,” she says, and it sounds almost like she is alive.

She wonders when that happened, why she never noticed until now.

He grimaces at her, and she tries to smile back. “Nyssa was very adamant about pampering after injury,” she says, greatly daring.

“Nyssa sounds like she’s got good advice,” Oliver says, voice carefully neutral.

Thea tries to smile again, but it feels like she keeps missing the mark, like she’s not trying nearly hard enough.

“Nyssa is pretty smart,” she says. “She taught me a lot.”

“Well,” Oliver says. “I hope I get to meet her, then.”

Something unravels inside her, to hear that, and she steps carefully into his space, and his arms are already open and ready for her, and he rocks with her while he holds her tight and he doesn’t tell her any lies about tomorrow, and it’s _nice_.

***

Thea leaves Ollie curled around a pillow in her bed, and she dresses in silence, the armor wrapping up around her skin and turning her into the kind of invincible Oliver isn’t.

She’s already dead; always been dead, so what does it matter that she’s going to die as soon as she meets Merlyn again, that she’s committing suicide every time she goes out alone without backup?

The bow is not her favorite, so she leaves it behind in favor of a spare blade, this one straight and broad and not curved wicked like her matched scimitars.

Oliver was right, after all.

They do need to see what’s inside Felicity’s warehouse.

***

“I didn’t expect it to be you, to be honest, Thea,” his voice echoes in the dark of the warehouse.

Thea is staring at the bones of the Queen’s Gambit, dried out and on display like some sort of morbid monument to her own death.

“You killed the vigilante,” she says. “Or I did, when I pushed him out the window. Who else would it be?”

“Moira,” he says. “She’s very interested in my death, currently. I wonder why that is?”

“She knows you’re after me,” Thea says. “Since you told her.”

“She knows I want to get to know my daughter,” Merlyn corrects gently. It sounds like the truth. “If she knows anything else, it’s because _you_ told her.”

“I told her nothing she didn’t already know,” Thea says.

“Oh? Well, whatever you told her, I have it on good authority that she’s reached out to China White for help in, how should I put it-- _offing_ me.”

Thea can see it now, the shape of the hole in the side of the yacht, the place where it exploded.

“Did you do it?” Thea asks, at once dreading the answer.

But she needs it.

_How_ she needs it.

“Of course I did it; Robert was going to _betray_ me. I’m building this kingdom for _us_. For you!”

“You didn’t even know I was your daughter until I told you!” Thea snarls, whirling on him. “I was _on_ that yacht, anyway!”

Merlyn flicks long fingers dismissively. “Details,” he said. “If Ra’s knew, I would have found out. I would have come for you. _You_ were destined to be my heir. Thea, please. Come with me. You can save Nyssa; she can be Beloved to the Heir. We’ll save Starling City, we’ll take over the League. Together, Thea, the way it was meant to be.”

“ _Tommy_ is your heir,” Thea says, drawing her scimitars.

Merlyn’s face creases with regret, and he draws his own sword.

He critiques her as they fight, like this is just sparring, like this isn’t _real_.

She wonders if there was ever a world in which she might believe him, might help _him_ against Ra’s, let him divide the League, Nyssa’s League, _her_ League, just to stand at a father’s side.

Might have had _him_ to teach her all of this.

“Shut _up_!” she screams, slashing recklessly and losing that sword for her trouble. She tosses her other scimitar from her off hand to her dominant, takes a step back to regroup.

He’s smiling, and she _hates_ him.

“Do you know what I did? All I did was take what I deserved; I was the best. In only two years I mastered what most of them had spent _lifetimes_ learning. Ra’s should have _honored_ me. He _meant_ to, but that _bitch_ was too much more to his liking. You should thank me, Thea. Your Beloved wouldn’t even be _Heir_ if it weren’t for me.”

His breath isn’t even coming fast, and Thea thinks that she is finally going to die. The rest of her still and lifeless to match the parts of her that were left behind the Queen’s Gambit when it was prized from the grasp of the sea.

“You killed Talia, then,” she says, and the calm in her voice isn’t feigned.

There is no fear, when you are dead.

“I did you a _favor_ ,” he snarls, and he truly believes his own words.

“You _killed_ me,” she says, rushing in with a slash she know will not connect. His sword parts her armor easily, and she can feel hot blood spilling down her torso where his own cut connects.

She doesn’t waste time drawing her last sword, and he makes a noise of pleased approval, still like this is a lesson and not what it is.

“You’re still alive, Thea. What I did _forged_ you. You wouldn’t be the woman you are if it weren’t for me. I _made_ you.”

“You made me?” she asks. “Do you even know what I am?”

“Beautiful,” he replies. “Perfect.”

She throws back her head and laughs, feels the weight of her hair and her hairpins shifting from how much she has been moving around in their fight.

“I’ll tell you,” she says, feinting and then locking her blade with his when he tries to take advantage of a hole in her guard that isn’t really there. “After the accident-- the _explosion_ \-- I got picked up by a ship called the Amazo.”

He gets in another hit, a slash to her right arm that sparks bright and hot with pain.

She doesn’t let it slow her any, even though she knows he is toying with her.

“They did things to me on that ship-- to a twelve year old girl-- that even _you_ would never condone,” she says. “They did so much to me that when Ollie got picked up eighteen months after I’d come aboard, I tortured him.”

Merlyn laughs a little.

“I chained him to a metal bedframe,” she says. “I shocked him until he was _sobbing_. I heard him tell someone else, later, that it was the worst torture he’d experienced in his whole time on the island, and I know that at one point someone stabbed him repeatedly and systematically with a _sword_.”

Merlyn is silent now, movements jerky where they had been fluid.

“Do you have any idea how many times you have to _rape_ a little girl, before she turns into the same sort of monster you are?” she asks.

She disarms him, and he puts his hands up, mouth opening to reply.

“Because _I_ don’t. I never could keep count. I couldn’t keep count of the days they starved me and taunted me with water. I couldn’t keep count of the number of men he made me hurt just based on the promise of maybe not hurting _me_. I don’t even know when he stopped making those promises,” she adds. “But he did. Eventually, I just hurt them because it felt _good_. I hurt _Ollie_ just because it felt _good._ ”

They’re both still, staring at each other.

“That’s what I am, _daddy_ ,” she says, lunging forward without even thinking about it. There’s no way for him to block the thrust; there’s no reason for him to expect it.

He tips backwards, and it’s like a movie, like _poetic justice_.

“I’m a monster,” she concludes, using her foot to help lever the sword free of his ribs.

She picks up all of her weapons, cleans them on his stolen League clothes, and turns to leave.

Oliver is in costume, barely standing, all his weight supported by a strut near the entrance, bow in one hand, arrow held loosely in the other.

She doesn’t know what to say to him.

He slips the arrow back into the quiver, puts the bow away, and holds out his hands.

“Speedy,” he says, voice warm and hurting and tired.

She stands still and frozen, staring at him.

“C’mon,” he says, and she forces herself to take a step towards him, another.

Eventually his gloved hands are wrapped tightly around hers, and he’s urging her toward the exit. “It’s okay,” he tells her. “You know I forgive you, right? You’re not a monster.”

“I am,” she says, and his fingers clench tighter. “I _am_.”

“No,” he says. “You’re my _Thea_. Does Nyssa think you’re a monster?”

“Nyssa?” she repeats, confused. How would he know what Nyssa thinks, he’s never even seen her, he’s--

“She calls you her songbird, doesn’t she? That’s where you got the name?”

Thea nods, and they’re still moving slowly away from the rotting husk of the Queen’s Gambit.

“Why would she call you something so beautiful if she saw a monster when she looked at you?”

Thea swallows hard.

“I-- I did so many things,” she whispers.

“I know,” he says. “But I love you anyway.”

***

Thea’s request for cleanup doesn’t get any response, but she doesn’t expect it to; Ra’s had promised her a lot of things in return for the death of Malcolm Merlyn, and one of those things had been freedom.

So when the car pulls up the next morning, and it’s Oliver and her alone in the kitchen drinking tea, she’s surprised to hear the guard butcher the name “Al Ta-er” in repeating their request for entrance.

“Sure,” Oliver says, and Thea can’t quite parse what’s going on. She feels even more remote than she had before she’d killed Malcolm Merlyn. “Send them through to the kitchen, please.”

“The kitchen is a really stupid place to meet an assassin,” Thea hears herself tell him.

“I’ve been doing it every day for months and so far it’s gone pretty well,” he says, sipping his tea.

“Beloved?” comes from the doorway, and Oliver’s eyes are cold as they assess the newcomer. Thea finds herself terrified of turning around.

“Nyssa,” Oliver says. “Welcome.”

When Thea forces herself to turn around, Nyssa’s got one of her tiny, secret smiles twisting her lips, and she says, “You must be Oliver,” in the voice that she saves for people she trusts, and Thea forces herself to get to feet she can’t quite feel.

Nyssa’s fingers trace her cheekbone, and she presses their foreheads together. “ _My father sends his regards, Beloved,_ ” she whispers in League Arabic.

Thea thinks this _must_ be better than the alternative Merlyn had offered her, because this choice has the seeming of life and of love, and she is so sick of drowning.

***


End file.
